


Cat's Cradle

by Branch



Series: Ivory Bridges [3]
Category: GetBackers
Genre: Angst, Canon - Manga, Drama, Fluff, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-07
Updated: 2010-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 23:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Branch/pseuds/Branch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post canon. Kazuki wants to build a relationship with Yohan. Yohan wants to find a new way forward for his clan. Saizou wants to escape the fear of his years with Yohan. And his sister wants everyone to be reasonable for a change. Contains spoilers for Saizou's backstory in vol. 33 and Yohan's in vol. 36.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kazuki visits his brother and starts to build a brotherly relationship to replace their adversarial one. Drama, Fluff.

Kazuki didn't think it was his imagination that this spring was more beautiful than any he remembered. Circumstances might be adding shine to the season, to the faces around him that looked up at the clearing light and the drifting petals, but they were circumstances everyone shared, that everyone felt even if they didn't quite know the reason. He wondered a little whether Yohan let the seasons of the Beltline turn, let himself see and feel this.

He wondered things like that a lot these days.

Did Yohan let the changing season touch his House, was he learning happiness now, had he let go that crane, the child's paper wish, and taken up a Fuuchouin's bell for his strings? As the breeze came up, touched with sun and green, Kazuki wondered. And he could find out, of course. There was no reason he couldn't visit Yohan; they were neighbors after a fashion. More importantly they were brothers.

He also wondered whether Yohan would see it that same way.

It was the flowers that decided him, finally. A few irises had taken hold in one corner of the plaza outside the apartment building where the cement had cracked and water pooled, a striking composition by the hand of nature itself, and they reminded him of Yohan's taunt about flower arranging and their mother's death. At the time it had only been meant to enrage him, but looking back he thought Yohan's faint regret when he said he couldn't arrange flowers had been genuine.

Well of course he couldn't! He'd been raised in Kokuchouin, and Kazuki very much doubted if the fine arts of the main house were taught there. Koto, dance, flower arranging, calligraphy. Though, his mouth quirked at the memory, Yohan had clearly learned to compose poetry one way or another.

Kazuki knew those things, though. And surely it wasn't too late.

It was just as well, perhaps, that the others were out today. Kazuki left a note saying that he had gone to visit his brother and would be back shortly, and walked out into the bright day to cross Lower Town and climb upwards.

He understood the nature of the Beltline much better now than he had at fourteen. The monsters there were shadows of the souls that lived in the place, and he felt neither fear nor satisfaction in clearing them from his way. On this trip he saw only a few people he thought might be real, and they didn't come close, fading away into the Beltline's fluidity. He concentrated on his path and it wasn't too long before the steps of Yohan's compound were under his feet.

The trees were still in summer leaf here, but at least it was the small daytime moon overhead and no flowerless petals skirled past him on the wind. It was a start, he supposed.

The doors opened as he reached them, with no hand on them, and Kazuki smiled. Yohan knew he was here. He followed the path that presented itself through gardens and over pools, through stands of pine that had not grown on the main house grounds; and yet the place was familiar. He wondered if Yohan had created a home here that was both the omote and ura compounds. That would be a hopeful sign, he thought.

At last he reached a room with its screens standing open, overlooking a low waterfall beyond. Yohan sat alone looking out at the water, quiet and collected. "Aniue," he said quietly.

"Yohan," Kazuki returned, smiling.

"Why have you come?"

"Because I wanted to see my brother again," Kazuki said gently, coming to sit beside him, setting down the small box he'd brought along. Yohan looked at him, solemn and wary but with a shadow of hope at the back of his eyes that gave Kazuki heart. "Besides, there's something I wanted to bring you," he continued, opening the box and lifting out the small arrangement of iris, water, and stones.

Yohan actually blushed. "I didn't…" he started quickly and then stopped, not looking at Kazuki.

"I know that already." Kazuki set the flower quietly before them; as deeply as the Phoenix had touched Yohan's heart, he'd known then that Yohan had lied about their mother being the one dead "flower" he had arranged beautifully. "It's spring." He touched Yohan's shoulder gently. "What does the poet's heart say of that?"

After a moment, Yohan said, softly, "In the spring chill, / as I slept with sword by pillow, / deep at night / my elder brother came to me / in dreams from home."

That caught at Kazuki's heart with the hint that he was indeed welcome here. "You are home now. And courage and friendship come to you and bloom for you."

Yohan reached out and touched a petal lightly. "Truly?"

"Life changes us, just as the seasons change the flowers." Witness the fact that after just five minutes in Yohan's company the language of Kazuki's childhood was coming back to his tongue again. He smiled. "Truly."

Yohan darted a quick, uncertain glance at him, and back at the flower. "I thank you," he murmured.

"There's no need." Nor could Kazuki think of better thanks than being able to sit with his younger brother this way. Remembering his earlier thought, he added, "Did you ever learn the koto?"

Yohan's mouth tightened. "No."

"Would you like to?"

Yohan finally looked up at him, startled. Kazuki waited, patient, while Yohan regathered his composure. "I would like that," he finally said, and looked back down at the flower. "Aniue."

This time the title had less of the bitterness that flavored Yohan's every word about the past, and Kazuki cherished the shy hint of acceptance in it.

That was more than enough to compensate for the argument he was sure would break out at home as soon as he told them he intended to visit the Beltline more frequently.

* * *

Kazuki flexed his fingers, making sure the ivory picks were secure on his fingertips. "The more you hear, the more you'll be able to play music by ear, but the way we speak of it is in numbers."

Yohan gave him a sidelong look. "Numbers?"

"Mm." Kazuki smiled. "One for each string. Listen. One." He plucked the first string. "Two. Three." Up the rank he went, and then stilled the strings with his hand. "And if I say ten-nine-eight, five…?" He played the little turn quickly.

Yohan blinked, tilting his head. "Oh."

"Here." Kazuki scooted over, patting the tatami in front of the koto.

Yohan was stiff, at first, prone to plucking the strings too hard, but by the end of the day he could run up and down the full tally of thirteen strings and make them ring clear. Better still, his shoulders had stopped stiffening each time Kazuki set his fingers over Yohan's to guide them.

Yohan frowned faintly at his fingers, touching thumb and index finger together as if testing the sensation, which Kazuki expected was just a bit numb from the pressure of the picks. "Does it have application?"

Kazuki firmly stifled a sigh. He shouldn't expect to undo the habits of years in a handful of days. "Several different ones, I would say. Here. Rest your fingers on the strings down at the end." He shifted around back in front of the instrument and thought for a moment. "Midare Rinzetsu", he decided; he thought Yohan would like the energy and sweeping runs of it better than the slow, melancholy sweetness of the simpler compositions Kauki had first learned.

It took concentration; it had been a long time since Kazuki had played regularly, and Yatsuhashi's music was always a challenge. He didn't look up until the last notes, measured and resonant. When he did, though, he smiled. Yohan's expression was distant, fingers still resting lightly at the base of the strings, but there was a tiny breath of wonder in his voice as he sighed.

"It really does feel just like our strings." He blinked and looked up at Kazuki. "This is why you always speak of the song of someone's technique."

"Exactly," Kazuki agreed softly.

"I didn't know."

It was only an observation, with no particular emotion in it, but it twisted Kazuki's heart all the same. "That was wrong. How can anyone be expected to understand our arts without this?" Kazuki bent his head over his hands, resting on the strings. "It's been wrong for so long."

Yohan's voice turned dispassionate again. "I expect the division started here, actually." At Kazuki's startled look, he gestured at the instrument. "The left hand and the right are both necessary, but they do very different things, don't they?" The distance in his tone turned darker. "And while the right hand strikes the notes and draws the eye, it's the left that controls the sound."

"Yes," Kazuki said slowly. "I wouldn't be surprised. But both hands _are_ needed, and no one could play if they ignored the left hand techniques." A sudden thought came to him and his mouth quirked. "Well, then, perhaps the new song of Fuuchouin will be a bit more… modern."

He bent over the koto again and struck the opening of Sawai's "Yume". This time he listened to more than just the music, and smiled at the sound Yohan made as his left hand flashed over again and again to pluck the strings, melody weaving back and forth between his hands.

When he sat back this time, he had to shake out his left hand. "I like Sawai's compositions very much," he said, breathless, sweeping his hair back, "but they're very demanding!" He smiled at his brother. "I believe you can master it, though."

Yohan flushed just a little and concentrated on rearranging his sleeves, and Kazuki let it go, satisfied that Yohan had heard what he meant.

* * *

Another day, another lesson. Yohan's touch with the picks was getting lighter, and Kazuki thought about that as he listened. Yohan had yet to even attempt one of the more passionate compositions, gravitating instead toward the delicacy of the oldest, most abstract music.

"Yohan," Kazuki said softly, as his brother finished, "what is it you fear?"

Yohan's head came up quickly, and his eyes were wide. Kazuki shifted around to sit beside him, arm around him. "Everyone has their own style, their own favorite music," he continued, feeling Yohan's tension, "but there's music you refuse even to attempt. The music," he finished, quietly, "that would take from what's inside you and set it free on the air."

Yohan laughed, soft and harsh. "Do you really think that's wise, Aniue?"

"I do."

Yohan glanced at him, still tense, but a little less rigid, perhaps startled by Kazuki's firmness.

"This is where our arts began," Kazuki touched the koto's strings, "but setting our passion into these strings will draw no blood. What is there to fear?"

"Myself." Yohan looked away, hair slipping down over his face. "I doubt someone like you understands that."

Kazuki was quiet for a moment, and his voice was cool and light when he spoke, drifting over the memories he never lingered on willingly. "You were not the only one marked with the stigma, little brother. I know that fear. But that seal is lifted now; it's the passions every one of us deal with that you face now." His lips quirked. "If they weren't, you wouldn't hear their reflection in that music you won't touch."

Yohan was still for a long breath. "Everyone?"

Kazuki softened at the innocent unknowing of that question. "Everyone." He drew Yohan closer and murmured, "You're no demon. You never were. You're a child of the world, like all of us." He shook Yohan gently. "So stop trying to escape from life. Both hands are necessary, remember? Pain and joy both."

Yohan looked up at him, and Kazuki's brows rose. He expected the flash of startlement at his rather peremptory tone; he'd meant to rock Yohan out of his habits of thought a bit. What he hadn't quite expected was the flash of yearning, of… happiness? Yohan looked down again before he could be sure.

"Yes, Aniue," he murmured.

Kazuki had more than usual to think about as he left that day.

* * *

Kazuki sat with his hands folded and listened to Yohan play.

Another might have wasted time in wonder that, after a mere few months, Yohan was able to play complex compositions with such firm skill. In fact, when Kazuki had considered that at all, he had wondered how frustrated Yohan must be that his progress had been so slow. The cleansing of the stigma had thrown a blanket over the absolute purity and simplicity of Yohan's perception and art, had left his brother uncertain, and his temper the same sometimes.

No, what caught Kazuki's breath short today was the way Yohan played.

Yohan had obeyed him, so meekly it had taken Kazuki aback, and chosen a composition that showed his heart. "Tori no You Ni" demanded a light hand and could easily have been turned into another performance of delicate technique. Today, though, Yohan played with his eyes half closed, swaying with the force of the music. The force of his strike, the timing, the clarity and vibrato he drew from the strings wrung Kazuki's heart. There was grief in the song, wild and passionate, rushing like the wind under straining wings. There was wanting, so intense it almost tore the constraints of the strings themselves. Yet they held.

When Yohan finished, he turned his face quickly away from the instrument and Kazuki rose and came to wipe away the dampness on his brother's cheeks. "This," he said gently. "This is what the koto teaches us."

"This…" Yohan swallowed and said, husky, "this is the Phoenix."

"It's the source of it, yes." Kazuki stroked his hair back.

And then he frowned. This close he could see dark smudges starting under Yohan's eyes. "Yohan, have you been sleeping poorly?"

Yohan waved a hand shortly. "I don't have time to sleep right now. I need to re-learn half my own techniques, and half the servants with the cursed seal don't _want_ to be freed, and…" He broke off blinking as Kazuki touched a finger to his lips.

"In other words, you haven't been sleeping enough." Kazuki shook his head at Yohan. "You have to take better care of yourself than that."

"In what time?" Yohan asked flatly.

"Right now." As Yohan just stared at him, Kazuki smiled and gathered him closer. "No one will disturb you while I'm here, will they?" He tugged gently until Yohan rested against him, stiff and startled. "So sleep. I'll see nothing happens while you do." He eased Yohan down to his lap, smiling as Yohan looked up at him, apparently at a loss.

"Aniue… But…"

Kazuki trusted his intuition and scraps of experience so far and said, very firmly, "Hush. Rest now, little brother." He knew he was right when the stiffness when out of Yohan, and settled Yohan's head comfortably in his lap. "Sleep." There was so much he couldn't restore to Yohan, but this he could give–an elder brother to watch over him.

He stroked Yohan's hair gently, steadily until Yohan's eyes closed, and his breath finally evened out into sleep.

Kazuki had less experience than Yohan with imposing his will on the Beltline, but he focused intently on the quiet, the isolation, the sunlit calm of this room, on turning away all worries and concerns. And, as minutes slid by and the sun moved slowly across the tatami, warming them, the only sounds were running water and the light, shifting song of birds beyond the screens.

The sunlight was slanting downward, and the air was cooling before he heard the scuff of feet out in the hall, and an approaching voice.

"_Finally_ found you, honestly Yohan it's not like you have to _hide_…"

Kazuki snorted softly to himself as Maiya slid a screen aside.

"_There_ you are!"

"Maiya. Quietly," he said, low.

She looked at Yohan, curled up asleep, and pressed a hand to her lips. "Sorry!" she whispered. Slipping in she closed the screen silently. "You actually got him to sleep?"

"He certainly needed it." And he wasn't exactly blaming Yohan's people, but his voice was cool on the observation.

Maiya sighed, folding down to the tatami, long sleeves flipped expertly out of the way. "I know. We do _try_. He just doesn't listen." She smiled wryly, looking down at him. "Well, not to us anyway."

Kazuki was quiet at that confirmation that he wasn't imagining things. Yohan really did seem to want Kazuki to guide him, and even scold him, like an older brother. Well, Kazuki thought he could do that; he was very glad to, in fact, to reclaim this little bit of what they might have had. He smiled down at Yohan, stroking back his hair again.

"I… never did get a chance to thank you."

Kazuki looked up at that, brows raised. Maiya was looking down at her hands.

"You saved us. All of us, in the end."

"That was my duty as the head of this House at the time," Kazuki said quietly.

"I know. Even so." Maiya set her hands on the tatami and bowed profoundly. "For Yuuri's life and mine. For the soul of our brother and Master. For the existence of our very House. I thank you most humbly, Kazuki-sama."

"And for the care you've taken of my brother, I thank you as well," Kazuki told her gently, and smiled when she looked up, eyes wide. "Only continue to stand by him, and that will be all the return I could ask."

She ducked her head again, and murmured, husky, "I will."

Yohan finally stirred, rubbing his eyes. "Maiya?" he yawned, and sat up blinking. Kazuki steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Good morning!" Maiya chirped, and Kazuki had to swallow a smile at the distinctly exasperated look Yohan gave her. If nothing else, she would surely help him learn to deal with people a bit less formally.

"What is it, Maiya?"

"Ah. Well." Maiya coughed delicately. "You do remember that Gorou-san wanted to speak to you?"

Yohan sighed. "I remember." From his tone he would rather not.

"Something troublesome?" Kazuki asked, sympathetic, tugging Yohan's kimono and haori back into order.

"Since I have yet to work out exactly what it is he wants, I don't know yet." Yohan sounded irritated by that, too.

"Well, perhaps it will be something cheerful like marriage candidates," Kazuki soothed. And then had to laugh at the horrified look Yohan gave him, eyes flicking ever so briefly to Maiya. "And when you've chosen, I'll teach her the Phoenix," Kazuki teased gently.

"I… I'm sure it isn't that," Yohan managed past his unaccustomed flusterment.

"You're _evil_ Kazuki-sama," Maiya said, admiring.

"Only in a good cause." Kazuki relented, smiling. "Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll deal with it well."

Yohan collected himself. "Will I see you Friday, then?"

"Of course." Kazuki leaned over to press a quick kiss to Yohan's forehead. "And before that, if you need me."

That made Yohan color just a little. "Thank you, Aniue," he murmured.

Kazuki rose, pleased with his new insight and the opportunities it offered to protect and cosset his brother. "For now, though, I should get home before the others worry so much they come looking for me."

Maiya grinned at that, looking past his shoulder. "Too late."

Kazuki blinked and looked around and sighed. Indeed, Juubei was standing in the open screen across the room. "Juubei."

"You weren't back at the usual time."

"I am perfectly capable of walking here and back without coming to any grief," Kazuki pointed out, though he knew quite well that this simple fact would have no impact on Juubei's protectiveness. Juubei didn't dignify the observation with an answer, simply waiting for him quietly. Kazuki shook his head, giving in. "Take care of Yohan, Maiya," he directed, in parting.

Maiya looked back and forth between Kazuki and Yohan, thoughts moving behind her bright eyes. "Of course, Kazuki-sama," she agreed, leaning over to twine her arm through Yohan's. When Yohan glanced up at Kazuki and failed to pull away, she and Kazuki exchanged a look of understanding and complicity. Maiya, Kazuki was satisfied, would borrow Kazuki's name as often as necessary to make Yohan take care of his health at least.

Kazuki swept up Juubei as he left, well pleased with the day's progress.

* * *

Gradually, Kazuki had started to see more people than Yohan, when he visited, sometimes Maiya or Yuuri, sometimes someone from one of the surviving cousin branches who nodded to him uncomfortably, sometimes one of the silent Kokuchouin retainers. Today the man who opened the gates for him was startled out of his usual unobtrusive quiet to stare at Juubei, pacing at Kazuki's shoulder.

"This really isn't necessary you know," Kazuki said one more time as Juubei followed him into the summer green of the Fuuchouin compound.

"We can hardly guard you, as is our duty, if we aren't with you." Juubei paused by one of the outer pavilions. "I can wait here if you wish, though."

Kazuki sighed, running a hand through his hair. It was about time he started binding the length of it back again, he noted absently. "I should leave you to Maiya's company." Juubei gave him a perfectly bland look and Kazuki couldn't help a laugh. "Oh, all right."

He left Juubei in the outer gardens and went to find Yohan. He found his brother in one of the inner rooms, today, looking out across a small, raked courtyard, hands folded on his knees.

"Aniue. May I beg a favor of you?" Yohan asked, more formally than he usually spoke these days.

"Of course." Kazuki settled beside him, curious. Yohan's face was very still.

"Spar with me."

Kazuki took a breath. In a way, he'd been expecting this for weeks; their conversations over the koto had always turned, sooner or later, to the application of the Fuuchouin arts. To the distinctions and interrelations of the omote and ura techniques. "If you wish."

"I don't entirely know where I stand anymore," Yohan said quietly. "You're the only one strong enough to test that against."

"I understand." Kazuki stood and held a hand down to his brother. "We can both find out."

And he did understand. For those first few weeks after he'd sealed away the stigma, when he was younger, he'd felt as though he couldn't quite see properly any more. As though nothing was exactly where he'd thought it should be. As memory had faded, he'd forgotten the disorientation too, but it had come back to him after the recent troubles, after he'd wakened and then rejected the stigma. He truly wasn't sure what he himself was capable of now, and as they walked out, beyond the delicate groves of trees to an open, grassy ring, he wondered how this would end.

They started slowly, with the simple barriers and direct strikes that children of the clan might use. Both of them controlled those techniques easily, only just touching each other when a strike slipped through. As they moved faster, turning around each other, they worked up the scale of complexity and one strike and counter built on another and sang through the air around them, Rain to clear the Mist, the Red Bird to ward away the Comet, strategy and power twining together into a single strand. It was intoxicating and, even as Kazuki felt his art wavering on the edge of his ability to grasp, he was almost laughing.

Yohan, though, was frustrated; Kazuki could see it in the tightening of his mouth, the tension in his forearms as his control, too, faltered. One moment his attacks were hard enough to push Kazuki's strings back but too hard to slip past; the next they flowed through like water, like light, but too slow to catch him.

Kazuki hesitated, hand poised to form the Flower Dance, looking a question at Yohan. Were they ready to try the final scroll? In answer Yohan's hand flashed up, sending the form darting for him first. Kazuki breathed and stepped into it, and threw the Whirlwind back at him.

Both of them were bleeding by the time they regained their stances.

Kazuki felt none of the crushing power that had marked Yohan's strings the last time they'd fought, but moment by moment Yohan's fingers steadied and, slowly, the line of his mouth relaxed. Kazuki nodded to himself and pushed harder, faster, spinning the Empty Moon around his brother. A breath passed as it closed.

Another.

When the countersurge of Yohan's strings undid the sphere, Kazuki laughed out loud even as Yohan's strings closed around him in turn.

Kazuki shook back his hair as Yohan released him, and went to catch his brother in his arms. "You watched me for a long time, didn't you?" he murmured as Yohan stiffened, startled.

"What…"

"You didn't use the black strings at all today," Kazuki pointed out. "Only the omote techniques."

Yohan shrugged. "It never made any difference to me where a technique came from; they were all the same."

"Once you saw them, yes." Kazuki smiled as Yohan's eyes shifted, even it it was a bit sad. "I was the only one you could have learned most of that from." He shook his head as Yohan started to speak. "I'm honored to teach you. It's my job, after all; you're my heir, aren't you?"

Yohan opened his mouth and closed it again, eyes a bit wide. "Aniue."

Kazuki rested his hands on Yohan's shoulders. "Better now?"

Yohan actually smiled a little. "Yes." He glanced down and back up, collected but Kazuki could read the shyness in his reserve now. "May we do this again?"

"Of course," Kazuki told him gently.

He was sufficiently distracted by his pleasure at this development that he didn't think what it would look like to Juubei when he emerged from the House scuffed and bloody, and had to spend a solid five minutes talking him down. Juubei didn't quite mutter under his breath, but he looked like he wanted to as he briskly sewed up the cuts before letting Kazuki go another step.

"You've seen me in considerably worse shape from training, when we were younger," Kazuki pointed out, wincing a bit but holding still.

Juubei actually glowered at him and Kazuki sighed, resigning himself to another few days of overprotectiveness. As Juubei led the way back down the steps of the Fuuchouin House, back stiff, though, Kazuki paused, attention caught.

"Kazuki?" Juubei looked back, as though he was contemplating carrying Kazuki home bodily, but Kazuki didn't mind that at the moment.

He reached up and touched the delicate leaves of the maple that grew by the steps. They were just barely tipped with autumn red.

"It's all right," he told Juubei, softly. "Everything's all right."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saizou has to find some way for his House to be a part of the Fuuchouin clan when he can't bring himself to face or follow Yohan, who now leads it.

Saizou trudged up the stairs of Yohan's compound, trying to not think and just admire the falling leaves instead. He was also trying not to curse himself for an idiot, and a pathetically spineless one at that, out loud, which at least helped distract him.

His nerves were practically twanging.

Fortunately, Kazuki was already nearly at the gates, as Juubei had said he would be.

Unfortunately, Yohan and Maiya and Yuuri were all with him.

"Saizou?" Kazuki stepped forward, frowning.

He swallowed down his nerves and waved a hand lightly. "You're usual escorts were called away, so I came instead. Makubex needed them rather urgently, and Sakura kind of told Juubei off for hesitating, so they went."

The frown got deeper. "He shouldn't have asked you to come!"

"Oh, he didn't." Saizou grinned. "Just looked all nobly conflicted, the way he does you know, and I couldn't take the brooding any longer so here I am!"

Kazuki and Yohan gave him such identical looks, sober and piercing and too perceptive for anyone's good, that he twitched before he could stop himself. The urge to kneel down in greeting to Yohan scraped against the urge to pull Kazuki behind himself and attack. Both were well out of date, but he'd had them for a long time after all. He could feel his smile tilting grimly out of his control.

He relaxed minutely as Kazuki came to him, steps light, understanding in his eyes. "Well, then…"

Yuuri snorted. "Not even going to say hello to your betters? Your manners have gone to hell."

It was the last little snowflake, floating down on the mountain of Saizou's self control, and in a breath it all came crashing loose.

Faster than thought his feather was between his fingers and his strings flashed out, slamming Yuuri back against the nearest wall and binding him there. When he shouted and struggled to reach his own bells, Saizou pulled the strings tauter.

"I am no longer constrained to tolerate you, and if you wish to know who is the superior I'll be very happy to demonstrate," he said, flat and cold. His fingers _itched_ for the ura techniques, with the urge to spin his strings into a spear and drive it through Yuuri's stomach and pay back just a _little_ of the hell the past eight damn years had been.

"Saizou." Kazuki's voice cut through the ice of his rage, soft but unyielding, calling him back.

One breath, and another, and he made his fingers relax, called his poised strings back. He turned on his heel, leaving Yuuri tied up right where he was, and stalked back to Kazuki's side. "As my lord wishes," he said, low and clear. He wanted everyone present to know exactly where he stood, and what Yuuri owed his continued existence to, because it wasn't Saizou's own patience!

Kazuki smiled up at him, just a bit rueful, and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Yes."

"Wow, Saizou is actually really strong!" Maiya put in, chirpily, trotting around Yuuri's trussed up body for a better look, and Saizou rolled his eyes. Well, he'd always known she had a really low sense of humor.

"I did tell you," Yohan murmured. Saizou looked around to see him reach out and lay his fingers on Saizou's strings, damping and loosening them until Yuuri slid down to the ground, coughing. The sight lit a spark of vengeful satisfaction in his heart.

Yohan's glance chilled it again.

"So, do you intend to withdraw the Eastern House from the Fuuchouin?" Yohan tipped his head as if merely curious. "Or will you give your House over to another leader? Now that you serve another, yourself," he added, nodding to Kazuki.

Saizou froze.

He hadn't thought. He'd known Kazuki had given over Fuuchouin to Yohan, and he'd never thought. His heart had said it was all over, that everything was all right now, but he'd placed Toufuuin under Yohan, and Yohan, not Kazuki, was the clan lord then and now.

The clan lord he, the head of Toufuuin, couldn't serve any longer.

"You will withdraw them, then?" Yohan asked, watching his face.

But Kazuki had no wish to rule more than their tiny House of Fuuga, now. How could he demand Toufuuin leave their clan with no place to go?

But he couldn't abandon them. He _couldn't_, the very thought clawed at his heart. His sister, his aunt, his little cousins, the old councilors who had supported him as their lord even while hell was breaking loose… "I can't," he whispered, and there was a certain cool sympathy in Yohan's eyes but no mercy, and the familiarity of that sent a shudder down his spine.

"Enough," Kazuki said sharply, shaking his shoulder a little. "Surely there's a third way," he added more gently as Saizou stared down at him.

Yohan opened his hand, palm up. "If Toufuuin is content to have no place in the Fuuchouin councils, well enough for them. But the other Houses will begin to ask about it soon."

Saizou took a slow breath, eyes fixed on Kazuki's, on the hope they held out. "Let me consider this," he said, suitably formal if a little hoarse. Yohan made a careless gesture of agreement, but it was Kazuki's smile that made Saizou's chest unclench. "After we get home. Which we should do soon, or Juubei will come up here after _both_ of us."

Kazuki nodded and bid Yohan farewell and drew Saizou out the gates and down the steps as Maiya got the groggy Yuuri back on his feet. Shock and satisfaction and fear chased themselves through Saizou's head and he stayed close to Kazuki all the way home.

He'd known it would be trouble, to come up here.

* * *

When Juubei and Toshiki got home, Saizou was still sitting on the couch staring at the ceiling. Toshiki took one look at him and went to fetch down the sake cups.

"Saizou," Juubei started, already sounding guilty, and Saizou sighed and looked down.

"You didn't ask me to go, I chose that myself, and you couldn't have changed my mind once I decided, so none of that."

Juubei closed his mouth with a snap and Saizou's lips quirked. He didn't often use that tone with any of Fuuga, but he _was_ the eldest of them, and, like Kazuki, he'd been raised to command, if only his own House. "Better."

"What happened?" Toshiki asked, passing out filled cups.

Saizou let his head thump back again.

"Yohan says Toufuuin needs to send someone to the clan council soon," Kazuki supplied, leaning forward from where he'd been cuddled against Saizou for hours to pour for Toshiki in turn.

"And I can't," Saizou said quietly. "I can't face him; not yet." Maybe not ever. He didn't know.

"Here's where those hidden techniques could actually come in handy," Toshiki murmured dryly. At their startled looks he waved a hand. "Well, if you could create a string duplicate, the way Maiya can, and send that in for you…"

Saizou chuckled at that. "If only."

"Wait," Kazuki said, straightening. "Perhaps that's a good idea."

"Excuse me?" Saizou blinked at him.

"Not a string doll, no, but could you send a proxy in your place?" Kazuki's eyes turning brighter. "Surely there's precedent enough for that."

Juubei made a thoughtful sound. "Indeed, there is. My own family has done that on occasion, when the head of the House is too old or incapacitated to easily attend on the Fuuchouin, and sends his heir to act for him."

"Is there anyone from Toufuuin you could send to act in your place?" Kazuki asked.

"Maybe," Saizou said slowly. "It would have to be someone who could hold their own, and also not get too carried away and promise the House to things without checking with me." He started to smile, shoulders loosening as he told over the possibilities in his head. "That might just work." He finally took a swallow of the sake. "I'll speak to my family."

* * *

"Don't be silly Onii-sama," Saizou's sister said composedly from her seat at the low table beside Sakura. "Of course you can't deal with him. I knew that already." She took a delicate sip of her tea, hands folded genteelly around the thin ceramic. "It will have to be me."

"You are the most impertinent snip ever to breathe air," he told her, ignoring the way Sakura and Kazuki were both stifling laughter. "Are you _sure_ everyone agreed to this, or did you just steamroller the lot of them? Again."

She gave him an injured look he didn't believe for an instant. "Everyone agreed, even Great-uncle Keiji. Our aunt is needed to run the House and school while you're away. And the twins don't want to do it."

Saizou snorted at that. His aunt's two little boys would agree to anything that would give them more time to play, and while he thanked whatever beneficent providence had kept them out of the compound the night the Kokuchouin attacked, he really hoped they'd grow up eventually. He didn't doubt Toshi had told them being the acting head of the House would be a great deal of troublesome work.

"I'm your nearest blood, and I have the strength and right. Stop arguing, Onii-sama," she directed.

Saizou sighed. No one ever won when Toshi really set her feet over something. "All right, if he agrees to this it'll be you."

"Good. More importantly, though," she set her tea down and looked at him, sober. "Are you sure this is wise, Onii-sama? This is the man who destroyed the main house and half our own. Will we really still follow him?"

"It wasn't Yohan who destroyed the main house," Kazuki said quietly from where he stood at the window. "Not alone."

Toshi frowned a little. "Well, no, it was all of the Kokuchouin, but…"

"Kokuchouin was the hand. But the force that destroyed us was our own fate." Kazuki had that distant expression he got whenever he spoke of this, the one that made Saizou's heart ache. "For three hundred years, the Kokuchouin were the shadow sacrifice of the Fuuchouin. Every death, every curse passed to them." Kazuki turned away from the window to look at them directly and Saizou heard Toshi's breath catch under the weight of those clear, sad eyes. "No fate can be evaded forever, though. And finally the fate of Fuuchouin burned through our shadows and returned to us. I mourn my family, as I have for eleven years. But the responsibility was ultimately our own." He smiled, tiny and heartbreaking. "So will you not meet Yohan yourself and open your heart to judge what kind of clan lord he will make now?"

Toshi bowed over her knees. "As you say, Kazuki-sama." Her voice was steady but Saizou could see the way her sleeves trembled and recalled that she'd never met _Kazuki_ before either. She was composed when she straightened, though, and Saizou had to hide a proud smile when she looked up. "Onii-sama?"

"He isn't seeking destruction any more," he said quietly. "It isn't for fear that I can't follow him now."

Her eyes slid to Kazuki and her nod was perfectly understanding. "Of course. Well, go make introductions, then, and I'll handle it."

That was his little sister all over. "Tomorrow," Saizou specified, just to keep her from having her own way in absolutely everything. It was a big brother's job.

Toshi sniffed, not fooled for a moment. "Slowpoke."

On reflection, maybe Yohan and his people deserved her.

* * *

Today Saizou was alone as he walked the halls of the new Fuuchouin house, and when he reached a room standing with its screens open to the inner garden, Yohan was alone too. It was a courtesy he hadn't entirely expected, and when Yohan welcomed him, quiet and formal, he felt the tug again–the helpless conviction that, in another place and time, Yohan would have been a leader he could gladly follow.

He settled across the mats from Yohan and took a breath. "I cannot abandon my House," he started out. "They have trusted me to lead them, and I cannot simply give that over to another's hands now." Another breath. "I do not wish to sever my House from the Fuuchouin clan. We are of Fuuchouin, part of that whole. I will not break that circle."

Yohan's listening stillness turned shadowed for a moment, but he nodded, accepting Saizou's reasons.

Another breath, deeper this time. "At the same time…" And now even formal language failed him. It couldn't contain this. Saizou closed his eyes, hands locking on each other as he remembered the ice and irony of Yohan's eyes watching his struggle to save Kazuki by betraying him, knowing its futility. "I can't," he whispered. "I _can't_. I served you under duress for too long. It would always be between us." He managed a shaky smile. "And do you really need a head of Toufuuin who can't help hesitating every time you give an order or even suggestion?"

"It would make things more difficult," Yohan allowed. "So? Have you found a third way?"

Saizou swallowed down the chill memory that seemed lodged in his throat. "Another of my House will act for me. My sister will attend clan functions, meet with you and the council." His mouth quirked up crookedly. "As if I were very ill but not dead yet, as Juubei put it."

"An acting master of Toufuuin." Yohan cocked his head, and Saizou thought there was genuine amusement in his faint smile. "I think that will be acceptable, yes." The old irony glinted in his eyes for a moment. "And if the Western House and the council think that it's only because of your bond to Aniue, well they'll understand that too."

Since that was the conclusion his own sister had reached, Saizou figured he was right. And if that meant that no one but the two of them ever knew the whole tale of hate and love and hope and cruelty that had bound he and Yohan together for those years, well Saizou was perfectly happy with that. He bowed slightly, as much as he could bring himself to which wasn't much. "I will bring my sister to meet you, then."

"Saizou." Yohan was gazing out over the garden. "You love Aniue?"

It was one of those Yohan questions that was really a statement, so Saizou just waited for the rest of it.

"How?" Yohan looked back at him, suddenly looking very eighteen, and Saizou had a truly horrible moment of wondering whether Yohan was about to ask _him_ to explain the facts of life. In preference to his foster siblings, which, actually, Saizou could completely understand…

"How did you know?" Yohan finished, softly.

Saizou let his breath out. That was a complicated question, too, but not nearly so horrifying. "I suppose it was love at first sight, after a fashion. Well," he added, relief making him babble a bit, "it was 'wow she's cute' at first sight. I kind of mistook Kazuki for the Fuuchouin _daughter_. Right up until I asked for a match with the heir and the cute girl bounced on down, all smiles." He smiled ruefully. "I like to think that surprise put me off my stride a little, but the truth was Kazuki would have defeated me outright if he hadn't been having so much fun with the match itself. He was grinning the whole time. I guess it was the smile that caught me first." He pressed a hand over his heart. "I wanted to see him again. I did, a few times. And when everything came apart…" he flinched from those memories, of Yohan's terrifying strength brushing past every attack and defense, of running like a rabbit. "Well. When I found him again, he still had that smile. He made a place for himself and the rest of us, carved it out of the chaos and kept it safe for us. He made a _home_ with that smile, with his heart, with the way he saw and knew each of us, and I couldn't turn away."

And that was more truth than he'd quite meant to speak to Kazuki's brother, who was looking outright wistful for once.

"Of course, it doesn't hurt that he really is strong enough to command obedience, if he wanted to," Saizou added, easing toward the less loaded side of the question. "Even when he'd suppressed the stigma, no one dared cross him." Saizou snorted softly, remembering the times he and the others hadn't even gotten a chance to step in because their opponents were busy cowering already. "Not even us, when you get down to it. It's just a good thing Kazuki is a kind man, you know, because not a one of us has been able to defy or disobey him for as much as two whole days put together."

"Yes," Yohan murmured. "I saw that. At the time, it was just one more thing to try to break." He was quiet for a moment before adding, "I didn't succeed."

Saizou took a long look at Yohan, sitting quiet and still with his head bent, watching his own hands on his knees, and remembered all the moments when Yohan's pain and conflict had matched so well with his own that he'd almost screamed with the unbearable sympathy it had roused in him. "You have some of that, too," he said, low.

Yohan looked up at that, brows raised. Saizou sighed.

"You remember how I was with Yuuri and Maiya, right?" He smiled, tilted, at the shadow of distaste that twisted Yohan's expression. "Yes, it was pretty sickening, sucking up to them, playing the clown. But by throwing away my dignity I kept my pride, secret in my thoughts and heart. You, though…" He took a long breath and let it out. "You let me keep my dignity, even guarded it from them sometimes. It was my pride you broke between your fingers. And you wouldn't have been able to do that if you hadn't seen to the heart of me, the same way _he_ does."

Yohan's eyes were shadowed. "I see," he said slowly.

Saizou stood. He didn't think he could take very much more of this. "I will bring my sister to greet you," he said again, reaching for the shield of formality, and turned to leave.

"Saizou."

He glanced over his shoulder, but Yohan was looking out at the garden again.

"Your sister's pride will come to no harm here," Yohan said, sitting with straight shoulders again.

After a moment, Saizou smiled a little. "I have faith that it will not."

And if his faith was mainly in Kazuki and Toshi herself, at the moment, perhaps it would come to be in Yohan too, a little, by and by.

* * *

Saizou walked beside his sister, occasionally giving a brief lecture on the nature of the Beltline as they hiked upwards.

"These, for instance, are not real." He pointed to the approaching shadowy robes. "You have to pay attention to intent." There were an awful lot of them, though. He wondered, as they worked their way through, whether Toshi herself was drawing attention. For this meeting she was dressed, not in a maiden's long sleeves and bright colors, but in the quiet layers of a grown woman and the long, silvery-fair hair they'd both gotten from their mother was tied at her neck with a single ribbon; demure as she looked, though, determination and pride lit the air around her. In this place, she was practically a beacon. Privately Saizou also thought she was fighting with especial ferocity to defend her new finery; she was always like that about new clothes.

"Does he live up here because he secretly wants to be a hermit?" She leaned against a handy pillar to catch her breath and straighten her haori.

"Actually, I think this is the only place he's ever really felt at home."

Toshi stopped and turned to stare at him, eyes wide. "Onii-sama…"

Saizou's mouth tightened. He'd said it already; it wasn't for fear that he couldn't serve Yohan. He just knew too damn much. He sent his strings flashing past Toshi's shoulder to cut apart the last robe and turned back to their path. "Let's go."

He was twitchy about this whole thing. This was his little sister, after all, and it was _Yohan_ he was about to introduce her to! He tried to quiet his own mind by observing her objectively, noting the firmness of her step, the maturity of her willingness to take up this duty for their House. It kept getting lost, though. This was _Toshi_; he'd seen her as a toddler, running down the hall in nothing but soap suds after escaping from her bath; he'd surprised her in front of a mirror, when she was eight, making faces in an attempt to find a way to smile without showing the dimple she hated; he'd stolen her hair ribbons to teach her fast reflexes and tickled her until she shrieked and flailed because sometimes she was just too serious for her own good. She couldn't possibly be ready for this!

Here they were, though, at Yohan's gate, and clearly expected as Kokuchouin retainers bowed them inside.

Yohan was waiting for them in one of the outer rooms.

Saizou watched the two of them while he performed the formal introductions. Yohan looked perfectly calm, though maybe a little withdrawn; Toshi had a faintly worrying set to her jaw. Sure enough, once they'd both expressed their pleasure in meeting at last, the bow she gave him was the one she would give the head of a strange House, not her own clan lord. Yohan raised a brow at Saizou, and all he could do was turn a hand up helplessly. Toshi obviously had her own agenda here.

"You are welcome within Fuuchouin," Yohan prompted her.

"I am most pleased," Toshi murmured. "But before I accept I must ask you something."

Both brows went up this time. "Even though the head of your House has already chosen this?" Yohan sounded curious, even a bit amused.

"Onii-sama is Master of Toufuuin. I will follow the path he chooses for us," Toshi said composedly. "Onii-sama is also too forgiving for his own good sometimes, and I saw some of what happened to him while he served you these past few years. So I must ask you: where do you mean to lead Fuuchouin now?"

"Ah." Yohan laid his hands on his knees and looked out the screens rather than at them. "I intend to bring the fourth House into the light."

Toshi's shoulders stiffened. "You wish to uncover the hidden techniques?"

Yohan shook his head briskly. "No. Not that." His voice turned soft and distant, and sent a chill up Saizou's spine. He'd heard nothing but that tone for a long time. "The hidden techniques were created as the ultimate weapons of war. They care nothing for grace or beauty–or the soul of the user. Only effectiveness. Let them remain hidden." He took a breath in and turned back to them. "No, binding those techniques to one of the Houses was where Fuuchouin took the wrong turning. They corrupted the true strengths of the Kokuchouin and left the other three Houses unbalanced."

Toshi sat back, staring at him. "Unbalanced?"

Yohan cocked his head at her. "The mark of the Eastern House is speed, yes?" When she nodded he tapped a finger on the floor. "Speed." He traced a circle clockwise, naming the quarters of it. "Speed, grace, strength…" He tapped the fourth quarter. "And the mark of the fourth House, it's true mark, is 'endurance'. To endure the dark and cold just the same as the warm sun, and live on." His eyes darkened. "That was corrupted when the hidden techniques were given into the Kokuchouin's hands. Their endurance was turned toward eternal darkness and death, the reverse of their true strength." He lifted his hand and spread it. "Without endurance, the other Houses fly away, ungrounded; cut off from the light, Kokuchouin sinks ever down until there is nothing but pain and terror left. We have seen what fate that tempts," he finished quietly.

Toshi was quiet, contemplating her hands, folded in her lap. Saizou couldn't blame her; he felt breathless. Was this the turn Yohan's thoughts had taken since Kazuki touched his heart and breathed life on it again? It was… stunning.

"What, then, would become of the hidden techniques?" Toshi asked slowly.

Yohan's mouth tightened but he answered evenly, "Let those come to it who choose it. Those who are willing to become the shadow of our Houses in order to guard them. Not children." Those last words sharpened abruptly, though Yohan relaxed again when Toshi nodded vigorously.

"Yes. Not children. Only those who have already mastered the techniques of one of the Houses." She paused for a considering moment before nodding firmly and looking up at Yohan. "One of the four Houses."

He actually smiled at that, and Toshi smiled back, and they both actually looked their ages though Saizou wasn't fool enough to say so to either of them. Maybe they would all get through the day without any catastrophes at all.

"Well then! There's only one thing left." Toshi's smile turned downright sunny. "I'd like a match with you."

A yelp of protest escaped Saizou before he could stop it and his sister gave him a stubborn look. "It's the only way I can be completely sure, Onii-sama."

Yohan, damn him, had that glint of amusement in his eyes again. "You are one who believes that the soul is revealed in battle?"

"Of course." Toshi lifted her chin, sitting straight and proud. Saizou buried his face in his hand with a faint moan. A little voice in the back of his head pointed out that she sounded an awful lot like he had when he'd challenged the Fuuchouin heir and met Kazuki for the first time. He told that voice to shut up.

"Well." Yohan glanced between them. "I have no objection. Provided the head of your House consents."

Saizou caught Yohan's eye and had to breathe through a rush of panic. Yohan had promised to guard his sister's pride.

He wouldn't hold back.

And, yes, Yohan was good enough to defeat Toshi without killing her. Possibly even without injuring her much. But Toshi was strong and determined, and maybe even faster than Saizou was. She wouldn't make it easy.

"Onii-sama?" Toshi said quietly, and it was the level calm in her eyes that broke him down. She knew. And she was still determined to do this.

Saizou swallowed. "I consent," he managed, low.

Yohan nodded and rose. "Come, then." He led them out through the gardens to an open ring littered with the signs of previous matches–splinters and broken ground and shattered stone. Saizou watched as his sister shed her haori and outer kimono, and tried not to hyperventilate. Toshi was serious about this. She unfastened a feather from her hair ribbon and stepped out into the ring.

Yohan drew a bell out of his sleeve. "Very well then, let us begin."

Saizou watched them, biting his lip hard. He tried to tell himself this was just another sparring match, and a friendly one at that, but couldn't quite get past the fact that the last time he'd seen Yohan fight he'd gone down without a ripple under that overwhelming, ruthless strength. The memory tightened his throat and made his fingers shake until he twined them together, white-knuckled. There was no sign of the black strings or the hidden techniques today, he told himself as strings sang and flashed across the open space.

Toshi stumbled and blood ran down her arm, and Saizou bit down so hard his lip bled too. He couldn't interfere; this was Toshi's decision, and she was still focused on Yohan, eyes bright and sharp. She drew her strings back in and sent them out again in the Butterfly, slipping and floating through Yohan's barrier. He caught them short and reflected them back with the Mountain Lake, and she cast a dazzling Sunrise in Spring with a second feather and spun aside under its cover. Yohan turned with her, smiling faintly.

So was Toshi.

Saizou took a deep breath, and remembered the way Kazuki had wrung him out their first match, and how much fun he'd thought that was, and sat on his hands. Literally, since if Toshi caught him toying with his feathers _he'd_ be her next target.

It was a hard life being a big brother.

There was blood running from more than one cut when Toshi set her feet in a stance that caught his heart and spun her strings out around her in the Dance of the Green Dragon. That was the last technique he had taught her, before he hadn't dared any longer for fear the hidden techniques he'd learned would corrupt what he showed her. The signature of Toufuuin.

Yohan nodded a little and his strings flashed and glimmered into the Dance of the Red Bird.

Toshi smiled outright at that and lunged. Strings rang and caught, seeking to cut, seeking to reflect.

And Yohan wove a new shape from a second bell. It filled the space around the Red Bird, and Saizou had never seen it before, but there was only one thing it could be.

The Dance of the Black Tortoise.

Toshi's strings struck and were deflected, and Yohan's strings closed down, binding her in place. Toshi seemed too busy staring to entirely notice, and Saizou couldn't blame her.

"Oh," she said softly, as Yohan released his strings. "It's… beautiful."

Yohan held up his hands, a bell caught between the fingers of each. "Grace and endurance."

"Yes." Toshi's smile turned brilliant. "Yes, I see."

Yohan contemplated his bells for a moment. "The Black Tortoise I found in the scrolls. There is one more Dance I hope to discover, though, one I've only seen mention of. Never a description yet."

Toshi sucked in a breath. "The dragon of the center…"

"The Yellow Dragon." Yohan nodded. "We will see."

Toshi drew herself up, torn clothes and dripping blood and all. "It's a good path you've chosen. I will be most pleased to follow it." She bowed to him, this time as to her clan lord.

Yohan's faint smile flashed again, maybe a little softer this time. "The acting Master of Toufuuin is most welcome."

Saizou forced his knees to hold him up and stood. "I'm delighted we all agree, now can we maybe go get washed up, Toshi?"

"Maiya," Yohan called.

Maiya popped out of the trees across from Saizou, and almost gave him heart failure. "Yes?"

"Ask Kakei-san to attend us please."

She caroled agreement and vanished back through the trees with a wave. Saizou, noting the way Yohan very nearly rolled his eyes, grinned briefly. And then he caught his sister's expression.

Toshi stared after Maiya, wide eyed. "She… Her, um… clothes. Are missing?"

Yohan sighed. "Maiya thinks it's amusing to dress like a character from one of her manga."

Toshi contemplated this and finally turned to give Saizou a suspicious look. "You never mentioned this, Onii-sama," she stated rather ominously.

"You get used to it after a while?" he offered.

"Hmph!" She tossed her hair and stalked back toward the house, only slightly impaired by a limp.

Yohan gave Saizou a puzzled look. "What was that?"

Saizou sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Toshi doesn't like thinking her big brother looks at girls. Ever. It's a sister thing."

"I see." Actually, Yohan looked even more puzzled. Not that Saizou could blame him, really. They followed Toshi more slowly and with less stalking, Saizou collecting Toshi's haori and kimono on the way. By the time they caught up she was sitting on a bench in the outer garden having her last cut sewn up. Yohan's physician gave him a quick look over and nodded with professional satisfaction before bowing himself out.

"You should hang your clothes up properly, you know," Saizou told her, shaking out her kimono and holding it up for her to put on. "And don't lift your arm that high, you'll tear the stitches!"

"Oh, stop fluttering, Onii-sama," Toshi huffed. "You sound like Juubei-san."

Saizou opened and closed his mouth a few times. "I do _not_."

"You do so."

"Do not."

"Do so!"

Their exchange was interrupted by Maiya's peal of laughter. "You see, now," she told Yohan, "that's what siblings sound like."

Yohan eyed her like he would a patch of quicksand in his path. "Maiya…"

"She's only teasing," Toshi seemed moved to reassure Yohan, smiling as she shrugged into her haori.

"Ah."

"I like you," Maiya declared to Toshi. "You got Yohan to smile. He doesn't smile often enough."

Toshi blinked. "Oh." She glanced between the laughing Maiya and the now extremely deadpan Yohan. "I'm… glad I could help?"

"I will be pleased to see you here whenever you wish," Yohan told Toshi in a very firm changing-the-subject tone. Toshi collected herself, recalled to the formalities.

"I will be honored to attend, at your word." They exchanged parting bows and Toshi nodded to Maiya after a moment's hesitation, and turned toward the gates.

Saizou paused in the act of following her and looked back. "Yohan."

Yohan stopped looking after Toshi and looked at him inquiringly.

"You deserve Toufuuin's service."

Yohan was still for a moment and then rose swiftly and came to Saizou. He lifted a hand to brush his fingertips across Saizou's forehead, and Saizou hesitated, the instant urge to jerk away fading. That motion… that was an unbinding. There was nothing left to unbind, though, nothing except… except memory. They looked at each other for a long moment and Yohan finally murmured. "I'm sorry."

Something inside Saizou loosened. Maybe it was memory after all. "Thank you," he said, husky.

When he turned to follow his sister out the gates and back home, he found he wasn't as worried, anymore, about what future she would find here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kazuki watches Yohan and Toshi draw closer, and contributes some maneuvering in the background to move things along.

Kazuki had expected to see more of Saizou's sister, as Toufuuin's acting Master came and went from Yohan's home. What he hadn't expected was to see her at Yohan's _instead_ of his home.

When he visited Yohan to find he and Toshi pouring through some ancient scrolls, he was only surprised. When he found them out in one of the winter-bare gardens, experimenting with forms, he was amused. When he found her arguing vociferously with Yuuri over whether the object forming techniques should remain hidden, and Yohan watching with quiet interest, he was impressed with her dedication.

When he found her listening to Yohan play koto he started to wonder.

"Trading more techniques?" he asked as Yohan closed the piece, stepping softly into the room. Both of them started a little, looking around, and his brows went up; Yohan always knew when someone else was in his house.

Toshi shook her head ruefully. "It wouldn't do any good. I don't play; I was just listening."

Kazuki blinked. "You don't?" He knew not all the Houses were as strict in their training as the main House was, but he'd thought everyone at least learned koto. It was the root of their art, after all.

"Oh, I have the basic skills," Toshi waved a hand. "I can follow a written piece of music well enough I suppose. But I just don't have the ear for music the way you two do."

Yohan promptly looked out the screens, coloring faintly, and Kazuki stifled a smile. "That must have made training frustrating for you," he said, drawing attention away from his brother's embarrassment at being complimented, even indirectly.

Toshi's dimple flashed as she smiled. "It was. So I argued with Otou-sama until he let me do something else for basic dexterity exercises."

Yohan looked back around at that. "What did you do?" he asked, head tilted curiously.

"Well… here, I'll show you." Toshi uncoiled a string and looped it around her hands. Her fingers flashed back and forth through the string and she pulled her hands apart to show a squared web of strings between them. "This is the butterfly."

Kazuki looked again and saw the broad upper wings and the narrow lower ones. "String figures?"

She shook it loose and her hands darted together again. "And this is the koto," she grinned.

Well, Kazuki supposed it was a good dexterity exercise at that, though he couldn't imagine it was as good for fine control as playing. Yohan, though, was looking at Toshi thoughtfully. "You normally go faster than that, don't you?"

It was Toshi's turn to color. "When I'm practicing seriously, yes. Onii-sama wouldn't agree it was good training until I could make a figure faster than he could get one of his strings into it to stop me." She looped the string around her hands again and paused for a breath.

This time Kazuki could barely see her fingers moving and the string sang as her fingertips plucked and shifted it. All in a flash, the long string closed into an oval knot between her spread hands. "That's the tortoise," she murmured, holding it up.

Yohan smiled, faint but true.

Toshi coiled her string up and asked them to play koto again, and Kazuki obliged. But he remembered that smile.

* * *

The next time Kazuki visited Yohan, though, the young woman he saw there was not Toshi. As he came out into the inner garden, he found Yohan in rather stiff conversation with someone Kazuki decided, after a minute's thought, might be a cousin on his mother's side, a girl a few years younger than Yohan with the same straight, heavy hair their mother had.

"Aniue." There was a definite note of relief in Yohan's voice, and Kazuki was fairly sure the girl heard it too.

"I must be keeping you from your business, forgive me," she murmured, not looking up. "I should be going." She bowed and shook her long sleeves back into place with a gesture that made Kazuki nostalgic.

"Not at all," he told her kindly. "It's good to see you and know you are well."

A slight gesture from Yohan brought a Kokuchouin retainer to escort her out and Yohan sat down on the engawa with a thump, careless for once of the disorder of his robes.

"What's this all about?" Kazuki asked, amused.

"They really are trying to marry me off!" Yohan drove a hand through his hair. "It started with Gorou, who wants me to marry a Kokuchouin girl to mix the bloodlines again, and then Takeo and Akihito decided it should be a Fuuchouin girl instead, and the lot of them have been dragging every girl they can find out here to parade past me."

Kazuki managed to turn his laugh into a cough but Yohan glared at him anyway. "I ought to tell them I'm going to marry _Maiya_," he muttered.

Kazuki sat beside him, setting down the bundle he'd brought, and leaned back to enjoy the early summer sun. "She is one of the people who's closest to you, after all," he agreed, though he was reasonably sure Maiya was too much Yohan's sister to be his wife.

"And she's a warrior," Yohan added, frowning in the direction the girl–the latest girl apparently–had left. "None of these will even look at me!"

"You are the clan lord, after all," Kazuki reminded him gently. "And they were undoubtedly raised to know what's proper."

Yohan frowned down at his hands. "I don't want a wife I could ignore." _As their mother's council had been fatally ignored_, hung unspoken in the air between them.

"Maiya would certainly not stand for being ignored," Kazuki murmured, seeking to lighten the shadow over his brother today. To his surprise, that shadow only deepened.

"I frightened her, though," Yohan said, low.

Kazuki frowned and wrapped an arm around Yohan, drawing him close. "What do you mean?"

Yohan was silent for long moments. "It was when you were coming through the Beltline, last winter," he finally said. "All I could think of was that you were coming, at last. And I would kill you. Or you would kill me. It didn't matter to me which, then. If I'd killed you, I'd just have died after, because there would have been nothing left. I was… I felt… intoxicated with it. And I kissed her. I'm not even sure what I was thinking, any more." He took a deep breath and let it out, shaking. "And I frightened her."

Kazuki's eyes had been widening all through Yohan's speech, and now he turned and pulled his brother tight into his arms. "I expect so, yes," he said quietly, breath stirring the fine, fair strands of Yohan's hair.

"These proper, retiring girls they bring to show me," Yohan whispered, "they're afraid already."

"Someone will come who isn't afraid," Kazuki said firmly. If he was right, someone already had, after all. But he wasn't sure enough of that to say it yet. He stroke Yohan's hair back and tipped his chin up. "Do you want to spar, today?"

Relief flickered in Yohan's eyes again. "You brought flowers, though," he said, glancing at the package Kazuki had set beside them.

"The calla and water lilies will bloom for a while yet," Kazuki told him. "And even when they don't, there will be other flowers." He smiled. "Sometimes I think that's the true lesson of ikebana. There will always be flowers still; they just won't be the same ones." Now that Yohan had finally agreed to let Kazuki teach him this, it would keep.

"Then yes." Yohan closed his eyes for a moment. "Please."

Kazuki pulled him up off the engawa and toward the practice grounds.

Their matches were a joy to Kazuki, especially now that Yohan had regained his balance and his mastery of their arts without the stigma. The song of Yohan's strings was light and fierce, now, not dampened by despair. Today they played out a match of subtlety and maneuver, rarely striking directly, layering form on form to create attacks from blind spots. The last one Kazuki only escaped by casting down the Comet to break it, and he spread his hands, laughing.

"My loss."

Yohan was smiling again, relaxed. "In a way."

Kazuki refastened his bells and ruffled Yohan's hair. "Stop fishing for compliments, little brother," he scolded. "You're still stronger than I am."

Yohan's smile quirked and he murmured, "In a way, Aniue."

Kazuki was still smiling when he made his way into the outer gardens, expecting to find Juubei there. What he found, though, was the girl he'd met this afternoon in low-voiced conversation with a woman at least ten years older.

"…should have seen the way Yohan-sama smiled at him," the girl was whispering. "I've never seen anything like it!"

The woman sighed. "As if it weren't bad enough that we have the memory of their mother to compete with. I've heard this before, that Kazuki-sama has grown to be Hana-sama alive again." She looked up to see Kazuki standing at the foot of the bridge and her eyes widened. "Kazuki-sama!" She bowed, hastily but with grace. The girl was more flustered and nearly lost a shoe, turning to make her own bow. Kazuki returned it, politely ignoring both the gossip and their discomposure. As the woman rose he finally recognized her as a second cousin he'd met sometimes during festivals; the girl must be her younger sister, then.

"Megumi-san, it's good to see you again after so long," he said, as if he hadn't heard a thing.

"And you as well, Kazuki-sama," she murmured, cheeks red. She nudged her sister aside as Kazuki crossed the bridge, and he left them to recover their composure.

He didn't turn toward the gate yet, though. He headed back around the compound, though the trees, to find Maiya.

If she couldn't ward this genteel assault off directly, he was fairly sure she'd still be perfectly willing to interrupt these would-be marriage interviews in her own inimitable fashion, and he had no intention of leaving his brother to deal with this alone.

* * *

One of the things Kazuki treasured most were the moments when Yohan relaxed for him, enough to sleep. Sleep was a demonstration of both trust and hope, for his little brother, and the sweetness of having Yohan asleep in his lap made Kazuki's entire world soft and bright. It didn't happen very often, even now.

Yohan had started out, today, insisting he was fine, but Kazuki had kept an eye on him as he guided Yohan through the little steps and choices of creating a flower arrangement and had seen the droop in his shoulders. Once the delicate stalks of lavender were arranged in their holder, he'd insisted that Yohan rest and Yohan had finally agreed. So when the door slid open, as Yohan's sleeping weight rested against his shoulder, he looked up with a frown, ready to warn off whoever dared to intrude.

Toshi stopped one step into the room, fingers pressed to her lips. It was a long moment before she managed to drag her eyes away from Yohan, long enough that Kazuki started to smile, and when she finally did she pointed to herself and back to the door, head tipped in a question.

She probably didn't even realize she was nibbling her lip, or that so much tenderness was plain to read in her eyes. It was that that decided Kazuki and he shook his head with a smile and freed one hand to pat the tatami beside him lightly. She crossed the room on tip toes and sat beside them silently.

"Yohan doesn't always sleep enough," Kazuki murmured, breath barely stirring the air of the room.

"He drives himself," Toshi whispered, frowning. "Only… it's him so it doesn't seem that way."

Kazuki smiled, pleased with her insight and sad at the truth of it. "His skill and power let him accomplish things no one else can, sometimes even with ease. But that doesn't mean he drives his heart any less hard, pursuing those things."

"Yes. Yes, that." Toshi's hand reached toward him for a second before she caught herself and tucked it back into her sleeve.

"I'm glad to know someone else visits, who will care for him." Toshi blushed at that, and Kazuki caught back a chuckle before it could disturb Yohan. "You have your brother's protective streak. I imagine it will stand you in good stead."

Toshi looked at him sidelong. Kazuki hid his amusement carefully. She was opening her mouth, probably to ask if he was teasing, or how much he knew, when Yohan stirred against his shoulder and rubbed his eyes.

"Aniue?" he murmured.

"Yes." Kazuki stroked back his hair, fingers gentle. "And Toshi, too."

Yohan smiled, small. "I thought so." He sat up, drawing his robes straight again, and he and Toshi looked at each other with pleased expressions.

Kazuki was starting to wonder if the entire world except him was blind, that no one else seemed to have spotted this going on. "Well, now that your research partner is here, shall I leave you to it?" he asked, lightly.

"Oh, you don't have to go, Kazuki-san," Toshi said quickly, but Kazuki noticed that Yohan hadn't answered and smiled.

"No, it's all right. I don't want Juubei to worry if I stay too long." He leaned forward and kissed Yohan's forehead and rose. "Take care of him," he added to Toshi in parting, meeting her eyes for a moment and watching them widen.

"I will," she promised.

Kazuki left them to it and made his way back out through the house, satisfied.

* * *

Kazuki had, so far, been mildly amused by the clan's efforts to find Yohan a bride, mostly because Yohan himself had been more exasperated by it than anything else. At the end of the summer, that changed.

He didn't find Yohan out in the gardens, or in the room by the waterfall, or even on the training ground, and finally went in search of Maiya instead. He found her outside one of the interior rooms, sitting beside a barely open door and chewing her lip. She looked up as he approached and he stiffened at the worry on her face. She beckoned him closer, pressing a finger to her lips. Kazuki settled silently beside her and peeked through the door.

The first thing he saw was Yohan's back, and the things he'd learned in the last year made him frown; Yohan was tense, shoulders too straight to be anything else. Looking past that, Kazuki's brows went up. In a half circle around Yohan sat the Fuuchouin councilors. Toshi sat to his right and Seifuuin Koshijirou to his left; between those two were the three surviving Fuuchouin elders and their new Kokuchouin compatriot.

"It would be reassuring to all if you took one of the Fuuchouin girls as wife," Fuuchouin Takeo was saying, persuasively. "Surely if you wish to repair the breach between the Houses that would be the best way."

That argument Kazuki hadn't heard before, and he frowned. How long had they been pressuring Yohan on those grounds? He drew a string out delicately, not letting his bell chime, and cast it through the door to Yohan's ear. "I'm here for you, if you wish," he whispered down it.

Yohan's shoulders relaxed a fraction and he nodded, as if to Takeo. "It would do little to reinforce the unity of the clan if it is evident that my Fuuchouin wife and I never speak."

"It would lend legitimacy, at least," old Seiji grumbled, and Kazuki's mouth tightened. He stood and nodded to Maiya, who knelt, grinning, and slid open the door for him to step through.

"And what cause do any have to question the legitimacy of my heir and successor?" he asked, settling back to the tatami beside Yohan. And, carefully, just a bit behind him. He lifted his brows in calm question at the councilors, who gaped back at him.

"Kazuki-sama!"

"What…"

"When did you…"

Through the sudden, chopped off babble, Takeo said, "Your heir, Kazuki-sama?"

"Indeed." Kazuki smiled, serene. "You may say that, during the previous ten years, I was the proper Master of Fuuchouin. But I have given over that responsibility to my younger brother. He has even completed the Kachoufuugetsu," he added, just to prick them.

He could see Takeo and Akihito shift uneasily, reminded of Yohan's strength and ability to master techniques he had only just seen, and felt the tiniest bit revenged for Yohan's tension.

"A proper succession should have been approved by the clan's councilors," Seiji said, gruff.

"Well, then, what is left but for you to approve?" Kazuki asked, and sat calmly while the debate ran aground for a silent moment on the double edge of his question.

Finally Takeo sighed. "What you say may be true. But, Kazuki-sama, a child of the hidden House…"

Kazuki felt Yohan drawing taut again, beside him, and he'd had more than enough of this. He rose, smooth and abrupt, and stood over them. "Yohan is the child of my mother and my father," he stated, cold and low. "What do you imply?"

They started back from him, even the head of Seifuuin. They remembered the sweetness of the child, no doubt. But he was not a child any longer. He had been, for ten years, Kazuki of the Strings, the Prince of Terror, most feared of the four kings of Lower Town, and he had no intention of tolerating this foolish obstruction.

Finally Yohan stirred and looked up at him. "Aniue," he said, quietly.

Kazuki looked down and saw the faint light of amusement in Yohan's eyes, though none touched his face. He sniffed and settled back to his knees. "Very well."

And if any had doubted that Kazuki had truly given over rule of the clan into Yohan's hands, they should not doubt it now.

"My honored elder brother has been a long while among rough elements," Yohan murmured in his most formal periods. "And he is now unaccustomed to having his will crossed."

Kazuki choked down a laugh at the irony of such a statement from Yohan, of all people, but it did its job. He could see the councilors' expressions changing as they really looked at him, at his clothes even, which were very much not traditional or formal–as Yohan's were. As they thought about what kind of clan lord he might make _now_. Yohan had a talent for this kind of maneuver, Kazuki thought with pride.

Takeo cleared his throat. "I intended no insult to Hana-sama, I assure you, nor does anyone doubt Yohan-sama's birth."

Kazuki followed the advantage while they had it. "My brother is blood of Fuuchouin, the highest of Fuuchouin, and yet raised among the Kokuchouin. Who else could possibly heal our clan? Who else would have the knowledge and the compassion to to do?" And if Yohan was still new to his compassion, well more shame to the clan that it took that long for anyone to show it to him.

"Even so, it would soothe the clan if he had a wife of Fuuchouin rearing," Akihito murmured, and Kazuki started to wonder if he really _would_ have to do something drastic to one of them to break through this stubbornness.

Before he could decide how to convey the offer to Yohan though, Toshi, who had been quiet so far, interrupted, slapping a hand down to the tatami beside her knee. "I will hear no more of this!"

Kazuki blinked, wondering for one shocked moment if she was actually going to put her own intentions forward here and now.

But no. She rose and stood in front of Yohan, facing the elders. "Kokuchouin Yohan is the Master of Fuuchouin and the lord of this clan! Toufuuin has acknowledged him and will tolerate no more of this insolence!"

"Are you so sure of your brother's feelings in this?" Akihito asked sharply.

"I speak with his voice, in this as in all else," Toshi shot back with such iron certainty that Akihito subsided. "Toufuuin follows Yohan-sama." She gave Koshijirou a narrow look, and he gave her back a sardonic smile.

"Our clan lord is the strongest wielder of our arts living," he observed. "Seifuuin follows him." _Obviously_ his tone added.

"I have no intention of challenging the Master of my House," Takeo started, exasperated.

"Then you will say no more of this," Toshi cut over him. "Your council has been heard. Now be silent." She stalked to the outer door and threw it open, pausing in the doorway to glance imperiously over her shoulder. Koshijirou bowed to Yohan and joined her with a smirk at the elders, who, after a few glances back and forth, gave in and followed. Toshi saw the last of them out of the room, turned and bowed to Yohan, and closed the door after her very firmly.

"Well," Kazuki said after a moment. "She knows how to get things done."

"She does," Yohan said, low, looking aside. Kazuki turned and gathered him close, protective.

"How long has this been going on?" he asked against Yohan's hair.

"Ever since I refused the last woman less than twenty years my elder they found to parade in front of me," Yohan sighed, leaning against Kazuki's shoulder wearily. "A few weeks."

"At least Toshi sympathizes," Kazuki offered.

Yohan laughed softly. "She complains whenever one of their visits interrupts one of ours, at any rate."

Kazuki hesitated, but who else was going to speak with Yohan about these things? "She likes you, I think."

Yohan looked up at him, startled. "She… does?"

Kazuki really couldn't help smiling at his surprise, and stroked his hair back gently. "She visits almost as often as I do, doesn't she?"

"She helps me research some of the lost techniques." It was more a question than a statement, though.

"And she talks with you. And she listens to you play. And she defends you from your unwanted suitors," Kazuki added.

Yohan actually blushed. "You really think so?" he murmured, fingers fidgeting with the edge of Kazuki's sleeve.

"I'm almost positive." And he was definitely positive that Yohan liked her back, which seemed a much better start than he had with any other candidate.

"Oh."

Kazuki smiled, satisfied that he'd done his duty as a big brother. Now he just wondered when one of them would manage to bring the topic up.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Toshi makes her choice known, Saizou has to deal with everything that's still between he and Yohan.

"You want to _what_?" Saizou yelped, staring at his little sister while Toshiki snatched for his coffee mug before it could hit the floor.

She lifted her chin in that way that made his stomach sink because it wasn't just stubborn. That was her "doing the right thing" expression. "I want to marry Yohan."

Saizou sat down with a thump in the nearest kitchen chair. "But you can't… I mean that's… _Yohan_?"

"It will stop the clan elders arguing over whether he should marry Fuuchouin or Kokuchouin blood, everyone in the clan knows me or at least knows of me, and Yohan won't have a wife who isn't a warrior," she listed off briskly. "And besides, I…" she looked down at her hands, clasped on the kitchen table, "I… want to."

"You've already agreed to this?" Saizou asked, feeling a little dazed.

"Well no. Not exactly." She reclasped her hands. "It would mean I couldn't serve as your voice any more, so I wanted to talk to you first."

Saizou scrubbed his hands over his face. "Toshi…" His little sister wanted to marry Yohan. His _little sister_ wanted to _marry Yohan_. Toshiki patted his shoulder with a heartless chuckle, but he also gave Saizou back his filled coffee mug. Saizou clutched it and tried to make his brain work.

"Onii-sama, do you… really dislike him?" Toshi asked hesitantly.

Saizou took a fortifying slug of coffee. "It's more complicated than that," he muttered. "I know he's changed, Toshi, but I've seen him do horrifying things." Some of them had been done to Saizou himself.

"I know."

Saizou looked up, startled, and Toshi met his eyes levelly. "I know. He told me some of them. When I asked why Takeo-san and Akihito-san were being so stubborn about getting a Fuuchouin wife. But he _has_ changed since then. He's…" she looked down again, cheeks pink, "he's kind. _And_ brilliant. And he really wants to do what's best."

Saizou groaned. Under her hard-headed presentation, his sister was an idealist at heart; if those two had bonded over that it was all over except the question of what flowers she'd wear for the ceremony.

Still.

"Toshi, are you really sure about this?" he couldn't help asking.

She glared at him. "Onii-sama, you are so–"

"Toshi," Kazuki interrupted, hands sliding over Saizou's shoulders. "Let us talk this over among ourselves."

She sat back with a huff, still looking daggers at Saizou. "Oh all right."

Juubei, who Saizou could just tell was hiding amusement behind that deadpan look, pushed away from the doorway where he'd been leaning. "Ane-chan asked if you would like to visit, the next time you were in Lower Town," he offered.

As she left with him, spine almost as stiff as his, Saizou let his head drop back against Kazuki's stomach. "What the hell am I going to do?"

"You're going to stop panicking and relax," Kazuki told him.

"Easier said than done."

Toshiki turned a chair around and sat, resting his arms across the back as he regarded Saizou. "I know you've forgiven him, even if you can't actually deal with him very well," he said. "So what's got you so knotted up about this?"

"It's my _sister_!" Saizou waved his hands, unable to find any stronger words than that.

"And it's my brother," Kazuki murmured, arms folding around his shoulders and drawing him back again. Saizou bit his lip.

"I don't mean he'd do anything to her," he started.

"Shh." Kazuki pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "I know. It's just that they'll be very close, and they might hurt each other. And we don't want that to happen."

Saizou craned his head back to look up at Kazuki. "How are you so calm about this?"

Kazuki smiled down at him. "Because I've watched them falling in love for half a year."

Saizou opened his mouth and closed it again. "And you didn't tell me?"

"They've also been studiously avoiding admitting it, the whole time," Kazuki pointed out. "And if you'd mentioned it to Toshi before she did, who knows what would have happened?"

Toshiki rested his chin on his arms with a wry grin. "Always a step ahead."

"Because he cheats," Saizou muttered.

"Well, if you want to see for yourself, why don't you come with me, the next time she visits him?" Kazuki returned.

Toshiki laughed out loud, probably at Saizou's expression, Saizou admitted ruefully. "I yield," he sighed, and lifted one of Kazuki's hands to kiss the back.

"Good," Kazuki said comfortably. "Because it's about time you did see them for yourself."

They obviously had Kazuki's blessing already, so Saizou tried not to worry. Too much.

* * *

"Are you sure…?" Saizou asked for the sixth or so time.

"We're far from the only ones watching those two," Kazuki murmured, nodding to a Kokuchouin retainer as they slipped quietly up the stairs. "Besides Maiya, and sometimes even Takeo these days, at least half of Yohan's retainers find an excuse to keep an eye on them. Yohan won't notice us in the crowd. This should do." They emerged onto one of the second level open rooms and Kazuki knelt behind the balcony half-wall and gestured Saizou down beside him.

Peeking over, he could see Toshi and Yohan sitting on one of the garden benches below.

Toshi was teaching Yohan string figures.

"Now the little fingers go all the way over to get the thumb string." She illustrated, and Yohan followed but missed one side. "Ah, keep the tension on the string! Here." She shook her string off her fingers and helped Yohan recover his, fingers dancing over the web of his strings as she directed. Yohan was looking studiously at his hands, but he was also smiling in a way that a loop of tangled string really didn't deserve.

"There! The butterfly."

Yohan did it a few more times and regarded the figure between his hands. "The Butterfly is also your favorite form, isn't it? Your fighting pattern always comes back to it."

Toshi's mouth quirked, and her fingers flickered through three figures in quick succession. "Well, actually… the Flowing River is my favorite. Enough that Onii-sama said I needed to stop using it so much."

"Ah. The Butterfly is your reminder, then."

Toshi smiled, fingers slowing again. "Yes, exactly! It helps me to remember the indirect approaches."

Yohan tipped his head, looking at her for a long moment. "Saizou is wise. But you should use Flowing River more often, I think. To deflect and strike through the center that way is very true to the heart of you."

Toshi's fingers stilled entirely, and the two of them just sat there looking at each other, apparently oblivious to anything else in the world. Saizou slid down behind the half-wall with a quiet sigh.

"They really are totally in love, aren't they?"

"They do seem to be." Kazuki settled beside him, shoulder touching his. "I've found them training and researching and talking about philosophy and history and even gardening, but sooner or later it always seems to come down to this." He gestured at the silent, absorbed couple below them.

"I should have known the very first day," Saizou muttered. "When she hustled him for a match."

Kazuki pressed a hand over his mouth, eyes dancing. "Does it run in the family?" he asked, once his shoulders had stopped shaking with laughter.

"Seems to." Saizou shook his head, rueful.

Yohan's voice drifted up from below. "Show me another one?"

"Come on," Saizou whispered. "I don't think I can take much for of the syrup before I drown."

They had slipped down the stairs and back out through the house, all the way to the bridge on the outer path before he put a finger on what was oddest about the whole afternoon. "Yohan really didn't seem to know we were there," he said finally.

"Mm." Kazuki perched on one of the railings. "That does seem to happen a good deal; every now and then I've surprised him walking into the room when he's with her. He seems to focus on her very exclusively when they're together."

"The Beltline was a lot… quieter, today, too."

"Yohan's is the strongest will here," Kazuki said quietly.

"You're saying he quiets it for her." Saizou crossed his arms and leaned against the other railing, considering that.

"More than that. I think she quiets him enough that the effect blankets the entire Beltline. It's been getting calmer and calmer over the past few seasons. But yes, nothing in the Beltline dares approach her any more."

Saizou sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm talking myself into this, aren't I?"

"I hope so. I think they'll be good for each other." Kazuki smiled gently at Saizou. "I wouldn't have encouraged it if I'd thought otherwise." His smile quirked. "And just in time, too." He nodded back down the path to where their siblings were coming, side by side.

"They're practically holding hands," Saizou groaned.

Kazuki laughed out loud. "I had no idea you were still such a traditionalist, Saizou!"

The children were close enough to spot them, by then, and Toshi was giving Saizou a look of mingled apprehension and suspicion. "Onii-sama? What are you doing here?"

He looked at her, and the way she drew a protective step closer to Yohan, and the way Yohan turned toward her without hesitation, and heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Okay. Okay, fine. If you really want him that much, you can have him."

Toshi lit up like sunrise. "Onii-sama!" She dashed the few steps up the bridge and threw herself into his arms, nearly sending both of them over the rail.

And then, just as quickly, she skipped back to Yohan, smiling up at him. "I do! I would! I mean…" she glanced down and back up, suddenly shy. "If you want to."

Yohan was looking back and forth between Saizou and Kazuki. "Saizou?" he asked.

He didn't hesitate, though, about taking Toshi's hands in his, and Saizou snorted wryly.

"Yeah. Not that it looks like the two of you really need it, but you have my blessing."

Yohan looked back at Toshi and smiled like Saizou had never seen before, sweet and happy and young, and Saizou had to swallow tightness out of his throat for a moment.

"I would be honored if you would marry me, Toufuuin Toshi," Yohan said softly, and Toshi laughed up at him.

"I would be honored to accept."

When it looked like they might just keep standing there, staring at each other, Saizou murmured dryly, "Scaring up the family members for this ceremony is going to be a project."

Toshi looked away long enough to stick out her tongue at him, and Saizou laughed. It was good to see his sister so happy.

"Family, yes." Yohan looked up at him again. "Will you choose another to act in your place with the clan, then?"

The thought that Saizou had been trying not to look at ever since Toshi first spoke to him darted up again. He could choose another. Or he could… not. He could return to Yohan's side himself, to this smiling gentle-eyed Yohan who he was trusting with his little sister.

To Yohan, who had trapped him in service and torment for eight long years.

To Yohan, who had all the deadly grace of the Fuuchouin line and had held him with more than force alone.

Saizou's hands clenched tight, and he had to swallow before he could speak. "I… don't know. Let me consider."

Yohan nodded slowly. "Of course."

Kazuki came to Saizou and linked an arm through his. "I'll take Saizou home, then, and you two can decide how you want to announce this to Takeo."

Yohan's eyes on Saizou were still grave, but a tiny smile curled the corner of his mouth, and Toshi had a definite light of mischief in her eyes. "We'll think on that, yes," she murmured.

As Kazuki led him back toward the gates, Saizou was aware that the decision he had made today had been the easy one.

* * *

Kazuki and Toshiki and Juubei had held and comforted Saizou while he wrestled with his past, with the braid of fear and sympathy and pain that still ran taut between he and Yohan. He was grateful for them, desperately grateful for the peace and shelter that belonging to Kazuki gave him. But he knew that he couldn't live out his whole life never going beyond that shelter.

In the end, Saizou had come to Sakura for a second opinion.

Sakura sat him down in her sunlit kitchen and made tea for them both, and listened as he told her things she already knew, things she had sifted out of his heart while he held her under the curse seal, and things he was only starting to become aware of. Chief among them, of course, the knowledge that he truly did want to return to Yohan's side.

Saizou drove his fingers into his hair. "Sakura, you're the smart one around here. Tell me why I'm even considering going back?"

He didn't honestly expect her to give him an answer, but she looked at him soberly for a long moment, arms crossed over her stomach, and finally sighed.

"He betrayed you. He held leadership over you with one hand and with the other denied everything that it means to lead. But you can't forget his brilliance, or the security of being led by such a powerful spirit. It draws you back, even when you fear to be betrayed and cast aside again."

He lifted his head and stared at her shocked to his bones, shaken by the blunt truth of her words. "How… how do you know?"

She came to him and rested her hands on his shoulders. Her smile was faint and shadowed. "I recognized that expression."

The world tilted and slid sideways and suddenly he heard another name behind the "he" she'd spoken. "Sakura…" He stared at her, reaching out to gather her closer, needing to comfort the hurt hiding behind her small smile. He knew that smile and that hurt.

She leaned against him and sighed, arms folded around his shoulders. "He did come back to us. He came back and he cared for us, little by little, more and more, and now we're safe in his hands, and I've forgiven him, truly I have, I know the pain he carried that drove him away, but…" She took a deep, unsteady breath and let it out. "I recognized how you looked, just now."

Saizou rested his cheek against her stomach. "You have a great heart. I don't know if mine is that strong."

"It is," she said softly against his hair. "You just want it to make logical sense to you, too."

After a moment Saizou chuckled, ruefully. "I did say you were the smart one."

Sakura took his face in her hands to make him look up. "I believe in you," she said, steadily. "I believe that you will never betray Kazuki, by this. And I believe that you will not betray yourself, either."

Saizou closed his eyes, letting her words fill him. Sakura believed in him. He held on to that like a lifeline in a storm. "Thank you," he whispered.

She leaned down and kissed him softly. "Go see him. Find what it is you need to know."

"Far be it from me to disobey the word of our House's councilor," Saizou murmured, wry.

"Really?" She looked down at him with a tiny smile. "Well, then. Go see him tomorrow." She took his hands and pulled him up and off toward her bedroom.

* * *

Saizou stood in the door of what he thought might be Yohan's favorite room, the one that overlooked the waterfall. Both Kazuki and Toshi mentioned this room frequently. Yohan was sitting by the open screens, back to the door. Saizou wasn't in the least surprised, though, when he murmured, "Come in, Saizou."

He came silently and sat across the way from Yohan, looking out over the water too, his hands clenched on his thighs.

"I have already said I will not force your service again," Yohan said after a while. "If you object…"

"It isn't that," Saizou interrupted, tightly. "If it were, I'd just choose another to speak for me and be done with it."

Finally Yohan looked at him, quiet and clear-eyed. "What is it, then?"

Saizou dropped his head, eyes closed. "It's that I do want to return," he said, low.

"I know your heart belongs to Aniue," Yohan said tentatively, as if he were feeling his way into this tangle too. Saizou huffed half a laugh.

"That's less of a problem than I thought it might be, now that more of the clan has met Kazuki and seen how completely he's released the clan to you. No one will think there might be a conflict of clan loyalty."

"So for appearances. What of reality?" Yohan asked.

That was the perception, cutting straight to the core, that drew Saizou so. "If Kazuki should ever choose to command something of me that conflicted with your orders, it's him I would obey," he said quietly. "But Kazuki loves you. He trusts the clan to you. I believe he would not do such a thing."

After a long moment Yohan said, "You entrust yourself greatly to our hands."

A shudder raked through Saizou, and he wrapped his arms around himself. "I… want to."

The past hung in the silence between them, the pain both of them had carried, had shared in a twisted way, and the fact that Yohan had been responsible for Saizou's.

"Perhaps," Yohan said at last, "we should take wisdom from your sister."

Saizou looked at him blankly, unable to make any sense of the words.

"You have not fought me since that first time, when I defeated you." Yohan held Saizou's eyes as he started. "Perhaps it is time you did."

Saizou swallowed, years of fear clamoring that it was pointless, hopeless, that to fight Yohan would only mean destruction–that or the shame of knowing there was nothing, nothing at all, he could do against Yohan.

But there was no glint of amusement or irony in Yohan's eyes now, nothing of those years, only quiet waiting. And perhaps that was Yohan's point. Saizou took a shaking breath.

"You both have that ruthlessness, you and Kazuki," he said, husky. "All right."

"Come, then." Yohan rose and led the way back out through the house to the same training ground where Toshi had demanded a match. Now the remark about his sister's wisdom made sense. Yohan stood in the center of the space, bell gleaming between his fingers, and simply waited.

Saizou took a breath, and then another, and sent his strings flashing out in the Winter Gale.

It was a strange fight. He felt as though he were fighting himself as much as he was Yohan, fighting the drag and twitch of fear in his muscles, fighting ghosts of the past that told him to cower behind the Jade Shield and not dare strike out. He fought past that, as well as Yohan's attacks, and breathed freer with every attack, twisting aside from the Rain Shower to return it with the Blossoming Plum, blood singing every time an attack drove Yohan to step aside.

He knew Yohan was not fighting with his full power, that this was a training match and not a true battle. But the knowledge didn't hurt; it was what they'd set out to do after all, to take each other's measure on this ground, and Yohan's grace called to him the way Kazuki's had the first time _they_ fought. He gave himself up to that grace again and let the rhythm of the match take him, moving through the forms like flying, hovering, watching for the opportunity to dive.

At last, Yohan spun his strings out into a form Saizou didn't recognize, and he tensed, wondering if Yohan would use one of the hidden techniques on him now. In a flicker of decision he chose to meet Yohan's lunge head on, seeking to entangle his strings in the Night Forest Web. Yohan's strings didn't close on him, though. Instead they drew taut just out of his range and _sang_.

Saizou thought he cried out; he couldn't tell. Sound and more than sound poured through him, halted him as surely as a binding but without holding him, cut through him like a knife but without touching him. He felt like it should be tearing his body apart, crushing him, but the force of it flowed through him without pause or pain.

When it released him his legs wouldn't hold him up and he stumbled down to the ground, stunned. Yohan walked back to him and Saizou took a breath and looked up. "What…?" he managed, voice rough.

"What are the four principles of our art?" Yohan asked in return.

Saizou blinked at him. "To cut, to reflect, to strike, and to bind," he answered, slowly. What was this, catechism?

"And so the signature forms of the four Houses, each one particularly and powerfully expressing one of the four principles," Yohan agreed. "But there is a fifth. It is the core and root of all the others. Resonance."

Saizou's eyes widened; that was what the unknown form had done, then. Passed the resonance of the strings into his body, far more powerfully than any technique he'd ever heard of.

"That," Yohan said softly, "was the Dance of the Yellow Dragon. I believe that it used to be the Fuuchouin succession technique, before Kachoufuugetsu–before the hidden arts were laid on the Kokuchouin–the proof that the heir had mastered the deepest root, as well as the highest reaches, of the art, and comprehended their unity and harmony." More softly still he finished, "Toufuuin Saizou, do you accept it?"

Harmony. To conquer without injury. Saizou buried his face in his hands and laughed, breathless and helpless. Yohan was Kazuki's brother after all. "Yes," he whispered at last, and looked up again, smiling, at his clan lord. "Yes."

Yohan smiled, small but pleased and bright. "I'm glad."

Saizou bent his head and let his new knowledge settle into his heart. Yohan had found a place for life instead of the death that he'd worn like an over-robe for all those years. He would care for Fuuchouin and bring it harmony, and Saizou was welcomed, not bound, at his side. It fit; it made sense; Kazuki was the Master of his House and heart, and Yohan was the Master of his clan. His honor would be safe in their hands. He let out a trembling breath, feeling himself truly relax.

Yohan touched his shoulder. "Come back inside." Now there was a hint of amusement in his eyes, but it was lighter than it had been before. "Aniue won't like it if I send you back to him in this condition."

Saizou snorted and levered himself upright. He could foresee his life getting complicated, between those two. To say nothing of what would happen when his sister mixed in.

* * *

Saizou's first meeting with the rest of Yohan's councilors wasn't particularly comfortable. He hadn't expected it to be. He remembered Seifuuin Koshijirou, after all, who seemed to feel it was his spiritual duty to never make anyone comfortable if he could help it.

"Saizou," Koshijirou greeted him, on the engawa outside the room they would meet in. "I see you've finally regrown your courage."

Saizou gave him a glittering grin. "Koshijirou. Well, you know how it is. It's astonishing what it can do to people when they actually resist instead of licking the feet of whoever presents himself."

Koshijirou laughed, apparently perfectly pleased. "It's good to have you back."

Some people, in Saizou's opinion, had really bad hobbies.

He heard the patter of running feet behind him and habit braced him by the time Maiya's weight landed on his shoulders. "Saizou!" Having failed to knock him over she swung down beside him and he blinked at her.

"Maiya-chan. You're _dressed_." Koshijirou snorted, and Saizou had to admit Maiya wasn't entirely dressed by a long way, but she had added a pair of prettily printed hakama to her usual, desperately scanty, outfit; by contrast she nearly looked demure.

Maiya beamed at him. "Well, now Yohan lets the weather change here, it gets cold sometimes. Besides, Toshi blushes if I'm not."

Toshi, coming behind her at a much more sedate pace, blushed demonstratively. "It's not that I want to interfere, Maiya-san, it's just…"

Maiya waved it off. "Oh, don't worry. If I need to fight, it's easy enough to get these off." She patted her thigh and Saizou heard the chime of her leg bells, apparently still in place under the fabric.

"Wasting time chattering about fashion can wait," grumbled an old man, who Saizou decided must be Seiji, as he stumped past them into the room. Maiya giggled in her most mendaciously brainless fashion and jiggled her breasts at him, and Saizou watched with interest as his neck turned red. Maiya must not like him very much; Saizou didn't discount that.

After all, the man must be completely oblivious not to have realized that they'd spend most of this meeting talking about fashion. Toshi would make sure of that.

He nodded to Maiya, gestured Toshi in ahead of him, and went to take his place at Yohan's right.

The actual marriage contract was settled quickly, despite Seiji's occasional grumpy noises, presumably at Toshi's participation; the families were already allies and more, after all. The marriage would only reconfirm Toufuuin's place within the Fuuchouin clan.

"Framing this as some kind of new alliance will only lead to further division," Saizou said firmly to Kokuchouin Gorou's suggestion, ignoring the sidelong glances of the Fuuchouin elders. "Toufuuin serves our clan lord willingly, and I won't suggest it might be otherwise."

Finally no one could think of any more clauses he needed to reject. Saizou sat back and opened a hand discreetly to his sister.

Toshi's eyes sparkled.

"Well, then, let us discuss the ceremonies themselves," she said brightly.

On mature consideration, Saizou decided thoughtfully, he wasn't entirely surprised that Maiya and Toshi were getting along. They had very similar senses of humor, under certain circumstances, and the clan elders had obviously been getting on Toshi's nerves for a while now. He was reasonably sure she didn't actually want a modern wedding with church trappings, and had only suggested it to see the colors Seiji and Akihito would turn, but she had no compunction about using the specter of it as a bargaining chip to wring out every single outfit, ornament and moment of display tradition afforded. Saizou just smiled blandly and agreed to every single demand. By the time they were done, the celebration had expanded into a week long festival, and Takeo was looking appalled at the notion that it would have to be hosted here in the Beltline.

"Your sister is a dangerous woman to cross," he murmured ruefully to Saizou as they all stood to go.

"She certainly is," he agreed with a brilliant smile.

"I wish I had known sooner that she favored Yohan-sama for herself." Takeo cast a thoughtful look over his shoulder to where Yohan and Toshi were saying temporary goodbye at great length.

Saizou snorted. "You and me both. But I think it's for the best. She loves his idealism and Yohan needs a bright heart in his life, and Kazuki doesn't actually live here."

Takeo stopped and looked at him for a long moment. "You know Yohan-sama well," he finally said.

"Yes," Saizou agreed, quiet. "I do."

Takeo smiled. "I had wondered whether your return to the clan council was wise." He bowed deeply. "Forgive me for doubting you, Master of Toufuuin."

Saizou's mouth quirked. "You didn't doubt me any more than I did. For a while there was cause. But we're both healing from it, Yohan and I. Toufuuin will be well; and so will Fuuchouin." His smile widened. "All the more after the entire clan sees Yohan, and Yohan and Kazuki together, at this circus of a wedding."

Takeo paused, brows lifting, and looked back at Toshi again, this time with open respect. "I… see." He smiled, small and rueful. "I will do my best to follow my lady's program, then."

"Usually wisest," Saizou agreed, and clapped him on the shoulder companionably.

After all, trimming Toshi down to size was _his_ job, and he didn't intend to let it out to anyone else.

Takeo nodded to him and moved off after his fellows, and Yohan and Toshi finally emerged from the room. Saizou traded identical grins with his sister. "Go tell Maiya about your victory, then," he told her. "I'll catch up with you at the gates."

Toshi laughed and ran the other way down the engawa.

"Saizou," Yohan said quietly, looking after her. "Thank you."

Saizou shrugged. "It was her choice. I just agreed to it."

"You did–to all of it." Yohan turned that even gaze on him. "That's why I'm thanking you."

Saizou hesitated for a moment, but at last he took a slow breath and knelt down in full salute at Yohan's feet. The body memory of heart-pain from the many times he'd done this before pulled at him, but he pushed it away with the crisp cool of the fall afternoon here and now and the memory of the new Dance Yohan had shown him. "It is my duty and my honor," he said firmly.

"Saizou." There was startlement and wonder in Yohan's voice, and Saizou smiled to himself. Neither would have shown, or even existed, two years ago.

He stood and gave Yohan a brighter grin. "Of course, you realize, as your big-brother-in-law, I'm going to tease you now. That's my duty too."

Yohan looked up at him, startlement softening into a smile. "Is it? Perhaps I'll look forward to it, then."

The trust of those words kept Saizou company all the way home.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kazuki teaches Toshi the Phoenix, and she finds a new beginning for the whole clan in it. Utter Fluff.

Kazuki walked through the house grounds as evening fell, nodding to the little knots of people he met. They bowed and murmured his name respectfully, but without the edges of fear or hope or anger so many had shown at the beginning of the week.

Almost all of the four Houses that remained were here for the celebrations surrounding Yohan and Toshi's wedding; Kazuki was fairly sure Yohan had extended the compound even further than usual for the occasion. There had been feasts and receptions and, this being the Fuuchouin clan after all, competitions every day. Maiya had distinguished herself, and not only because she had nearly caused her opponents apoplexy when she casually stripped down to her fighting array. Even without the hidden techniques, her skill at the binding forms that Yohan said were the hallmark of the Northern House was outstanding. There were even murmurs starting about reconstituting the Thirteen Strings–Maiya among them. Saizou had trounced Seifuuin Koshijirou in their own match, which seemed to satisfy both of them. Toshi had fought three of her own House to a standstill, and Kazuki had had to smile at the approving sounds the onlookers to that match had made. Fortunately, Toshi hadn't seemed to catch any of the details, most of which concerned what strong children she would bear.

And Kazuki… well, Kazuki had had a match with Yohan.

They were accustomed to each other after a year and more of training together, of course; that hadn't been the point of this fight. No, this had been a demonstration for the clan. They had worked up through the simpler techniques all the way to Kachoufuugetsu, and when Yohan had reversed the Empty Moon onto him, Kazuki had yielded. The watchers had been silent, after, maybe shocked, maybe frightened, until Kazuki had laughed and caught Yohan up in a hug. The shock and fear hadn't survived the sight of the clan lord flushed and flustered and having his hair ruffled. Yohan had given Kazuki a distinctly exasperated look, after, but softness had lurked behind it.

Now it was the last evening of the celebrations, and Kazuki had one more duty to fulfill before it was over. He was looking for Toshi.

He found her in one of the inner courtyards, brushing the sleeves of yet another outfit straight, and had to chuckle. "If I can delay your appearance for just a little while," he called to her.

"Kazuki-sama!" She paused and came to look up at him with a glint of mischief much like her brother's. "I suppose I should say Onii-sama, now."

"I'd be quite pleased if you did. It's a good moment for it, I believe; before you go out, I need to show you something to keep for the family." She cocked her head at him, questioning, and he waved for her to walk with him.

"There is a technique that appears in none of the regular Fuuchouin scrolls," he said quietly as they paced through the halls and out into the gardens. "It has been a hidden technique of its own, passed down among those who marry into the Fuuchouin main house. It's called the Phoenix." He glanced at her, curious. "Have you and Yohan found any mention of it in your researches?"

She shook her head. "Nothing."

Kazuki nodded, not entirely surprised. "My mother, in her wisdom, taught it to me and so preserved it for the moment it would be most needed. I give you her words to me: _Flowers are beautiful, but they can only abide in one place. The wind in nimble, but it has no will. The moon gleams from on high, but it has no warmth. However, birds not only shine beautifully, but have freedom and agility… They fly freely of their own will, and because of their warm wings, they can soar as high as they wish._" Kazuki stopped beside one of the pools and turned to Toshi. "It is not an art of strength, but of compassion and resolve. And now the heart of Fuuchouin comes to you."

She nodded solemnly, eyes fixed on him as he took a bell between his fingers. He showed her the steps of it, so deceptively simple, and guided her from one to the next until she cast the Phoenix up into the sky and he could feel that it was right.

Toshi stood in the shadows of the trees, looking at the feather between her fingers. "This form… to complete it could take my life," she said softly.

"If necessary, yes," Kazuki agreed, voice steady.

"But what if…" She chewed her lip. Finally her chin lifted. "Yes. Kazuki-sama, please come with me." She spun around and set off through the grounds toward the main court where Yohan and the heads of the Houses were waiting. There she waved off the compliments and smiles that met her and plunged into a whispered conversation with Yohan, hands shaping the air. Yohan listened and frowned and nodded, and finally rose and came with Toshi to Kazuki.

"Aniue," he said. "Toshi wishes to give a gift to our clan. Do you approve?"

Kazuki could only imagine one thing she might want to do, and stared at her. "Toshi…!" He didn't dare even look at Saizou, who was already eying his sister suspiciously.

"It can be done," she insisted, eyes alight. "I know it can be done."

Kazuki pressed his lips tight. "Give me your word that if it doesn't go as you think it will, you'll break off."

Toshi nodded. "I promise. I'm not courting death at my wedding, honestly!"

Kazuki sighed; the glitter in her eyes still made him nervous, but she had given her word. "Very well. I approve."

Yohan and Toshi moved out into the open center of the court together. Murmurs ran around the perimeter as people noticed the bell and feather in their fingers. Saizou started making his way around the edge to Kazuki, frowning faintly. Toshi lifted her head and raised her voice to be heard by all.

"There are many who could not be present to celebrate with us; but they are not gone." She held out her hand to Yohan, in the sudden silence, and he wove his strings out around her in the taut framework of the Yellow Dragon. Kazuki's eyes widened with sudden understanding, and he leaned forward, watching Toshi gather her strings within that enfolding, magnifying resonance and cast them upwards. The song of them, actually audible, spilled over the watchers and beyond, though the entire compound.

And the Phoenix descended.

And the Dragon rose to meet it.

Kazuki pressed a hand to his mouth, eyes blind with sudden tears. He could feel his mother's presence, and his father's, and those who had watched over him growing up. Saizou's arms closed around him and he turned to bury his head against Saizou's shoulder, feeling the hitch of quick, choked breaths in Saizou's chest. His family was here, and he had their blessing.

He blinked his eyes clear and looked up to see the glimmering presence of the Dragon and Phoenix whirling together over the clan. Yohan and Toshi were standing below, in each other's arms. As the forms they'd called together faded, Kazuki heard soft sobs and the swell of softer words, laughter, remembrance, not only in the court but from the rooms and gardens beyond it. As Yohan and Toshi moved back to the platform where the heads of the Houses and their councilors sat, Kazuki watched people part before them and bow deeply, ungrudgingly to them both. "It will all be well," he said softly.

"Yes," Saizou agreed, as Juubei and Sakura and Toshiki slipped in through the crowd to find them. "It really will."

Kazuki met his brother's eyes across the court, as his little House gathered around him, and smiled, open and free.

It would all be well.

**End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The translation of Kazuki's mother's description of the Phoenix is by [Jane](http://jk.dreamwidth.org/), direct from the manga.


	6. Appendix

I extrapolated a good deal, based on canon, and thought it would be well to post an overview of the result.

### Canon

Canonically, we know that there are multiple branches of the Fuuchouin clan and style. There is the main house, the Fuuchouin, also referred to as the "omote", the front or face. There are the Kokuchouin, also referred to as the "ura", the back or hidden. There are the Western and Eastern branches. We know that the family name associated with the Eastern branch is Toufuuin. The family names are written as follows, translating 風 (fuu) as "grace" for ease of reading.

風鳥院 (Fuuchouin): House of the Bird of Paradise, or, more literally, of the Graceful Bird.

黒鳥院 (Kokuchouin): House of the Black Swan, or, more literally, of the Black Bird.

東風院 (Toufuuin): Eastern House of Grace.

We also know that, during Kazuki and Saizou's fights, both as children and as adults, they use techniques named the Dance of the Red Bird and the Dance of the Green Dragon, respectively.

We know that the Houses have hallmarks to their style, that the main house focuses on beauty and grace, that the Western style focuses on strength, and that the Eastern style focuses on speed. (see Voodoo Child 14)

We know that the Phoenix is a secret technique, handed down among the women who marry into the Fuuchouin main house.

### Extrapolation

  


#### Names

Based on the pattern of names above, I have assumed that the family name associated with the Western Fuuchouin will be 西風院 (Seifuuin), the Western House of Grace.

#### Four Beasts, Four Houses

The Green Dragon and the Red Bird are two of the four cardinal guardian beasts found in Chinese astrology and myth and imported into Japanese literature. The Green Dragon is the beast of the East and the Red Bird the beast of the South. Based on this, and on the characters who use those two techniques, I have made two assumptions. One is that there are two other Dances within the Fuuchouin clan repertoire: the Dance of the White Tiger (the western beast) and the Dance of the Black Tortoise (the northern beast). The other is that the four Houses of the clan are symbolically and perhaps philosophically aligned with a beast and direction to each. The Eastern Fuuchouin are seen to use the Green Dragon. This suggests that the main house, represented by Kazuki using the Red Bird, is aligned with the South.

If this is so, it gives the Western Fuuchouin the White Tiger, and places the Kokuchouin in the North with the Black Tortoise.

#### Ura and the North

Based on the assumption above, and the hallmarks of the three styles that are noted in canon, I also extrapolated that the hidden techniques of the black strings were not the original hallmark of the Kokuchouin. The hallmarks of the other three have some relation to their symbolic beasts. The Red Bird of the South is a creature of elegance and grace, for example. The astrological associations of the tiger and dragon (metal and water) have led to them becoming a common metaphor in the martial arts for straightforward attack versus the indirect, which lines up reasonably well with strength versus speed.

Thus, the mark of the Kokuchouin style should be something having to do with the associations of the Black Tortoise. These are longevity, stability and wisdom; winter; and water. Based on this, I made the supposition that the hallmark of the northern style is endurance. Following this logic, the Kokuchouin must, at one point, have been an integral part of the Fuuchouin circle of Houses and had their own regular scrolls and techniques. The techniques of the black string, then, must have been, at first, not associated with any one House, and only placed in the keeping of the Kokuchouin later, thus turning them into the ura, or hidden House and apparently displacing their traditional style.

#### Four Principles

This is total extrapolation, based on the foregoing. I needed to figure out what the four Dances might actually do, so I decided that, logically, they should express the spirit of their quarter and particular style. It's hard to imagine an attack that expresses grace or endurance, though, so I reached a little further. The techniques we see in canon seemed to me to divide into four basic functions: bindings that capture, strings that cut like Rain Shower, strings that strike like Comet, and deflections like Jade Shield. I aligned these with the four hallmarks of the Houses, resulting in: East/speed/cut, South/grace/deflect, West/strength/strike, North/endurance/bind. Thus I assume that the Dance of the Green Dragon is a powerful cutting technique while the Red Bird is an equally powerful deflection, which explains why they cancelled each other out both times.

#### Dragon and Phoenix

Now the fun part. First of all, the Red Bird of the South is not the Phoenix. Those are two different mythological entities. The Phoenix is a more inclusive creature, showing all five of the cardinal colors, and has been used to represent the Empress during imperial periods.

About those five colors. There are actually five guardian beasts that can show up, to go with the five elements of the Taoist cosmology. The fifth is earth, in the center. This is associated with the Yellow Dragon, who is used to represent the Emperor.

Thus, for a truly united clan, there should be a fifth Dance, and the nature of that technique should match the association of the element of earth: unity. The principle I chose to go with this Dance was, in a way, the first one Kazuki mentions; when he fights Akame, the thing that allows him to win is his understanding that it's the vibration imparted to the strings that gives them strength. Thus, the principle that runs under and unites the other four is vibration or resonance. In accordance with my assumption that the Fuuchouin lost their balance, their unity and harmony as four Houses, when they assigned the Kokuchouin to the hidden techniques, I also posited that the Kachoufuugetsu, the ultimate technique that expresses the Fuuchouin's valuation of beauty above all, was something that replaced this earlier Dance. Originally, my theory goes, what the heir to the clan had to demonstrate was his understanding of unity and balance, not simply of beauty. The conflict was probably embedded in the clan's origin, of course, given that the main house, the source of the entire clan, is named for the Bird of the South, the graceful and elegant bird. The primacy of the southern aspects simply swung too far and unbalanced the whole.

When the center has returned and the Dragon and the Phoenix are united, in the persons of the couple who lead the entire clan, they should produce perfect harmony.

#### Invented Techniques

There are only a few string techniques named in canon, really, so I had to invent some more.

**Butterfly**: Similar to Flower Dance though not as powerful, this technique sends strings slipping on sidelong vectors, like the flight of a butterfly, to get through a straightforward defense or attack.

**Mountain Lake**: An advanced defensive technique that reflects, rather than simply blocking, the opponent's attack, as perfectly as the water of a still lake reflects an image.

**Sunrise**: In the best tradition of Getbackers Physics, this technique sets strings to reflect the available light at the opponent, blinding them to one's movements. _Sunrise in Spring_ is the particularly Toufuuin variation, which does so very quickly, creating a flash more than a glare.

**Flowing River**: Deflects an attack upward, just as a river swirls at the bends, and strikes through the space thus created like the fast current in the river's center. (This is essentially Yang style's Fair Lady, only with strings.)

**Winter Gale**: This is a two-pronged attack; even if it does not bind, or freeze, the opponent it is meant to blind them with a wall of strings, as with a heavy snowfall, so they can't attack accurately.

**Blossoming Plum**: This is an offensive technique meant to be used while under attack, just as the plum blossoms while the winter frosts are still hanging on; it takes momentum from the opponent's attack to strike more strongly.

**Night Forest Web**: This is a defensive technique designed to entangle the opponent's strings, as one is entangled in the spider webs spun at night while walking through a forest.


End file.
